Ryan Reynolds recently joked that Deadpool 3 was practically writing itself, and a lot of fans will be hoping that’s actually the case after the Merc with a Mouth’s Marvel Cinematic Universe debut has failed to make any sort of headway in development despite being confirmed almost an entire year ago.
It doesn’t help that the leading man keeps signing on to more and more movies in the meantime, while one of the major sticking points is presumably how to parachute a popular and yet very much R-rated character into a family-friendly franchise, and that’s without even mentioning the self-referential and meta fourth wall-breaking humor that’s always been Deadpool’s trademark.
Of course, Wade Wilson has been linked with almost every MCU project across Phases Four and Five, along with several others that are only said to be in the discussion stages, and we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones that told us Reynolds had a secret role in Hobbs & Shaw and Netflix is developing a Witcher spinoff series – that Deadpool 3 might be a prequel with a massive time jump in it.
According to our intel, one of the many ideas being thrown around behind the scenes at Marvel Studios is to set at least a good chunk of the movie ten to fifteen years ago when Wade was still part of the Weapon X program, something we’ve seen before in both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and his first solo outing.
The story will then lead to him betraying them, before jumping to the modern day and Deadpool 3 ending by firmly establishing the fan favorite as part of the current MCU timeline. Of course, the movie is making such slow progress that anything could realistically happen at this point, and Marvel Studios will be looking to keep their cards as close to the chest as possible regarding specifics, but at the moment, at least, this is the direction they seem to be heading in.