The announcement that Deadpool was being folded into the MCU was a cause of celebration for fans of the Merc with a Mouth, but there’s one big hitch to this good news. Fox was ready to go on expanding the DP franchise, with X-Force up first, but obviously Marvel has cancelled all those plans and is starting again with their own ideas. Deadpool 3 is happening, make no mistake about it, but it seems like it’s going to take its time in getting here.
While speaking to Total Film about his new movie Free Guy, Wade Wilson himself, Ryan Reynolds, gave us an update on where things stand with the threequel under Marvel Studios. As you’d expect, given that Hollywood is shut down right now over the coronavirus pandemic, Reynolds couldn’t offer much in the way of specifics. In fact, according to him, he and the studio are still working out “the ins and outs.”
“Oh, man, I really don’t know,” Reynolds said. “It’s just all so new with it being over at Marvel now, and, you know, figuring out the ins and outs as much as I can, from where I sit. We’ll see.”
“I don’t feel like an insider at all [though]. I think once I’m more intimate with it – if we get to make a Deadpool 3… if or when we get to make a Deadpool 3, I’ll probably have a better perspective on that. But I’m a huge fan of Marvel, and how they make movies. So when Disney bought Fox, I only saw that as a good thing. Deadpool hopefully being allowed to play in that sandbox, I think is just a win for everyone involved. But we’ll certainly see.”
Though you might think that having a ready-made hit character on their hands would make things easier for Marvel, it might actually be tougher than creating a new hero. The challenge is in meshing the pre-existing Deadpool into the MCU in a way that retains what people love about him but also doesn’t break the reality of the franchise that they’ve carefully built up over the past decade.
For instance, there’s been a lot of debate about whether DP3 will keep the R-rating of previous films or switch to Marvel’s standard PG-13 certificate. Several reports have said that a mature tone is going to be kept, while others say that there may have to be some compromise, so we’ll have to see what happens there. Likewise, it’s unclear how connected Deadpool will be with the rest of the MCU.
Like Reynolds says elsewhere in his Total Film interview, though, Deadpool 3 will be a win for everyone when it eventually hits theaters. We just have to be a little patient.