Fox Was Planning a NEW MUTANTS Trilogy with Warlock and Karma; Antonio Banderas Was Cast as the Villain
It looks like Fox and director Josh Boone were looking to build a trilogy of films around The New Mutants before Disney bought the studio and took on ownership of the movie.
A post-credits scene was planned for the first film that would have opened up the world of The New Mutants and set up the future of the franchise. The scene was never shot, but Antonio Banderas was cast in the role of Emmanuel da Costa, who is the father of Henry Zaga's Roberto.
Banderas’s character was going to be a member of the Hellfire Club, and the sequel would have dealt with Sunspot returning to Brazil to reunite with his archaeologist mother, whom Emmanuel is trying to kill. In a recent interview with EW, Boone said:
"We always intended to do New Mutants: Brazil as the second movie. It was intentional that we didn’t shoot it. We had always planned to have a tag at the end of the movie that introduced the villain for the next movie. We even had an actor cast, but because of the merger and because Marvel owns X-Men now and is going to do their own thing, there was no reason to go shoot it."
The director confirmed that the actor was Banderas, and he went on to explain that Karma was going to be the main villain in the second film and Warlock would have also been introduced:
"Karma was always going to be the villain in the second movie that would be absorbed into the group by the end. We had always wanted to bring Karma and Warlock into the second one when we couldn’t do it in the first one. For us, we wanted that initial core team [for the first movie]. We just couldn’t swap out Illyana. We felt like there was no reason to do [the movie] if we couldn’t bring that character to life in the first one."
"In our heart of hearts, we hope [The New Mutants] makes a bunch of money so that we can go make the second one. We’re all just bummed at everything that happened. Just the merger and everything else. It had nothing to do with us personally and had an impact on every single movie at Fox at the time."
Yeah, I doubt that they are going to get to make their sequel even if The New Mutants ends up being a success. But Boone certainly has some cool idea that I would have liked to see come to fruition!