With Alita: Battle Angel delayed until February 14th, 2019, Fox have a free release slot on December 21st, which they’re apparently planning to fill with an untitled Deadpool movie. And though the studio hasn’t told us what it is yet, rumors point to it being a PG-13 cut of Deadpool 2. Uh…okay?
Sure, the movie was a critical hit beloved by audiences and cleaned up a the box office, but it’s now out on home video release and you’d have to imagine any enterprising young person who wants to watch the film can see the original cut in all its bloodthirsty glory.
Personally, I loved Deadpool 2, but I’m struggling to imagine how they’re going to cut it down to PG-13 without losing what makes the movie so great. After all, it opens with the Merc suicidally blowing himself to bits and continues through a variety of gory, blood-soaked action sequences that conclude with a particular Marvel villain getting a power cable shoved up their ass. Even if they could cut it down to a PG-13, I can’t help but think you’d kill the anarchic atmosphere.
With X-Men: Dark Phoenix and Gambit once again delayed (the former until June 2019 and the latter until June 2020), it’s clear that something’s going very wrong behind the scenes at 20th Century Fox. Perhaps it’s the incoming tremors of their superhero plans being curtailed, as the X-Men IP is about to be purchased by Disney. Or perhaps it’s because they’re frantically trying to second-guess what audiences want (witness the ongoing New Mutants debacle for proof of that), but repeatedly delaying tentpole features while re-releasing neutered versions of your hits, like Deadpool 2, feels like desperate, endgame kind of moves.
This seems to me like the start of some very juicy stories that are bound to leak from 20th Century Fox. Mark my words, there’s more drama to come and heads are going to roll.
