When a movie has been delayed as long as The New Mutants has — the film was first shot back in the summer of 2017 — some viewers begin to assume the film is a disaster. And perhaps The New Mutants is! But there are recent reports that might give cause for some hope. We recently learned that despite all those delays — some of them caused by the merger of Fox, the studio that originally produced the film, and Disney, who owns Marvel — there have been no reshoots or massive structural changes to the film that director Josh Boone originally shot way back when. And now we learn, via Entertainment Weekly, that the film will be among the first superhero films from any studio with a major and crucial same-sex “love story” between two characters.

Here are the details, from EW:

Word may have leaked early, but Boone confirms that the story he penned with screenwriter Knate Lee features a same-sex ‘love story’ between Rahne Sinclair (Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams) and Danielle Moonstar (Another Life‘s Blu Hunt). ‘It’s sort of the spine and focus of some of the character-driven stuff in the film,’ the movie-maker says.

To the best of my knowledge (unless something has happened very recently), Dani and Rahne are not lovers in Marvel Comics. Williams explains that "Rahne and Dani have a telepathic connection in the comics, and so we just wanted to extend that in the film and put that within reality,” and added “If they really could understand each other on that level, then you’d probably end up falling in love with that person.” I do not have the experience in telepathic relationships to argue with that logic.

This news comes amidst rumors that there could be several LGBTQ characters in Marvel’s upcoming Eternals. Assuming The New Mutants still opens in theaters on April 3 — no guarantee in this world we live in — it would beat that film to the market by several months. And if the romance is as important to the film as Boone suggests, and now another of Disney’s “exclusively gay moments,” it will be a landmark in the genre.

The New Mutants opens in theaters on April 3.

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