Of all the projects featured during this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, one that had the most positive buzz was Tim Miller’s Deadpool. The long-gestating project just recently wrapped filming, but Miller and star Ryan Reynolds came to the 20th Century Fox Hall H panel prepared nonetheless, and showed off three minutes of footage from the film that was met with quite a bit of excitement from attendees.
That footage leaked online shortly thereafter, but Fox has yet to follow Warner Brothers’ lead and release the official version online. According to the Merc with the Mouth himself, though, there’s a very specific reason for that.
Reynolds took to Twitter yesterday to assure fans that an official version will arrive in three weeks’ time, due to the fact that some visual effects work still needs perfecting:
As much as I want the #deadpool footage from #SDCC officially released, the VFX shots aren't done yet. We have something for you in 3 weeks.
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) July 12, 2015
While three weeks seems like an awfully long time to wait for the exciting first glimpse at Deadpool‘s long-awaited cinematic solo outing, the timing does make sense, as it will likely coincide with the release of Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot (another Marvel project from Fox, which will – if successful – exist within the same cinematic continuity as Deadpool and the X-Men films), which hits theaters on August 7th – three weeks from now.
Deadpool will hit theaters on February 12th, 2016. Joining Reynolds as the titular F-bomb-dropping antihero are Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano, Andre Tricoteux, and Brianna Hildebrand.