Disney is sticking to PG-13 family-friendly superhero entertainment, according to company chairman Bob Iger. In an investor call earlier today, Iger confirmed that the Marvel Cinematic Universe will not be seeing an R-rated film in the mega-franchise, despite the recent uptick in popularity for such blood-soaked entertainment thanks to some guy called Deadpool that everyone seems to love.
On an investor call today, Disney Chairman Bob Iger made it very clear: “We don’t have any plans to make R-rated Marvel movies.”
That makes sense for the studio, even when looking beyond its squeaky clean roots. There are already R-rated stories in the MCU, they just aren’t movies. Over on Netflix, the studio is letting its TV division shed blood and brutality all over shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones. The latter even had one of the steamiest, most protracted sex scenes on the small screen in years. Take that, HBO.
For the company to risk tainting parents’ perception of what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is would be a dangerous thing if they were to go down the Deadpool route. It’s making enough money that such a risk may not matter, but dividing off the “adult content” of the MCU and placing it behind the Netflix barrier is working wonders — both Daredevil and Jessica Jones were pretty stellar — so why chance it now?
One of Deadpool‘s writers, Paul Wernick, recently commented on the shift in positive discussion surrounding more R-rated superhero films coming down the pipeline.
Here’s what Wernick had to say:
“That shouldn’t necessarily be the lesson that everyone takes from ‘Deadpool,’ that all super hero films should be R-rated. It’s great that some of them will be R —a lot of our favorite movies from childhood, ‘Die Hard,’ ‘Terminator,’ ‘Matrix,’ they were all R-rated action movies. More than anything, the lesson we hope people take away is: you’ve got to take risks. Sometimes that risk will be an R-rating, sometimes it won’t, but to trust the lunatics is the lesson to take away from Deadpool’s success,” Wernick said.
Tell us, are you disappointed that the MCU won’t be seeing its own R-rated films? Or is it best for the franchise to stick with what is already working? Let us know in the comments.
