The success of Deadpool potentially created a brand new subgenre for the comic book blockbuster. Both of Ryan Reynolds’ outings as the Merc with a Mouth showed that audiences were thrilled to see a movie that poked fun at the tropes and archetypes of the superhero film, and Fox were rewarded with over $1.5 billion in box office takings.
Of course, almost any big budget pic tends to be shot through with a vein of humor to go along with the spectacle, and it’s an approach that’s served the summer season incredibly well, dating right back to 1975 when Steven Spielberg’s Jaws revolutionized cinema forever, two years before George Lucas and Star Wars further changed the game.
Anything that proves successful for one studio will no doubt lead to a slew of thinly-veiled imitators from others, too. Using the aforementioned pair of films as an example, it’s no coincidence that the 1980s were filled with low budget creature features and attempts at launching layered sci-fi franchises.
The point is, that sort of inspiration is still prevalent today, as we’ve seen countless times from the number of shared mythologies to have followed in the wake of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In fact, tipster Mikey Sutton is now reporting that Warner Bros. and DC Films want a Deadpool of their own, in that the companies are seeking an irreverent, meta and self-aware character to headline a series of movies for them.
Sutton doesn’t offer much more information on the matter, but he does name Ambush Bug as a potential candidate. Irwin Schwab was created as an intentionally ridiculous figure of fun, and he’s definitely one of the more unusual names at DC’s disposal, but he’s hardly got the cultural cache to step into the Deadpool-esque void that WB are reportedly looking to fill.
