When The New Mutants panel at Comic-Con happened and it was once again confirmed the film would be in theaters on August 28th, some people were confused. Many have expected Disney to release it straight-to-digital, either on Disney+ or Hulu, as a means of avoiding the embarrassing box office of Dark Phoenix. Director Josh Boone has weighed in on this with Collider, and he has a reason why Disney absolutely will put The New Mutants in theaters.
“With most movies, you sign contracts that guarantee a theatrical release, so it needs to open to ever go digital in the first place,” Boone said. “We just, too, would like to see people to see it in the theater. But it needs to obviously be at the right time when it’s safe to go back.”
So Disney is contractually bound to release The New Mutants in theaters first before it can go streaming. While the easy thing would be to just drop it in a handful of open theaters, at least they’re trying to find a pathway to it being a success. I had begun to think, with the severe lack of any advertising, that Disney was intentionally cutting the film off at the knees.
