Instead of pushing forward with Deadpool 3, Fox is going down a slightly different path with their most profitable Marvel character by moving Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with a Mouth into X-Force, a team-up movie which follows on from the debut of the group in this year’s Deadpool 2.
Josh Brolin’s Cable and Zazie Beetz’s Domino will lead the film alongside the Regenerating Degenerate, but in what ways is X-Force not just another Deadpool sequel and its own thing? Writer/director Drew Goddard spoke to The Hollywood Reporter recently and explained how his project is more about taking the way Deadpool parodies superhero films and using it to spoof superhero team movies.
“The thing that was exciting about X-Force, in particular, was the fringe element of what X-Force was to the X-Men. I still feel like there is real opportunity to explore that. What Deadpool is to the superhero movie, X-Force can be to the team superhero movie.”
This is actually a great idea. A few years ago, the notion that we would have so many superhero team films that we’re in desperate need of a spoof of one would’ve been ridiculous, but in the last few years, we’ve had so many that there’s got to be a lot of material there for Goddard to play with.
Likewise, Goddard also appears to be going back to the X-Force comics for inspiration, in which they’re the kind of red-headed step-child of the X-Men. Judging by the end of Deadpool 2, the off-shoot team will include the aforementioned trio as well as Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Colossus. Lewis Tan, who played Shatterstar, has also suggested that his character, Terry Crews’ Bedlam, Bill Skarsgard’s Zeitgeist and the rest who were killed in DP2 could return as well, thanks to that time-traveling post-credits scene. We just wouldn’t bet on Brad Pitt coming back as the Vanisher, though.
