Studios wouldn’t touch R-rated comic book movies for a long time, with history showing more often than not that alienating a huge section of your built-in fanbase was rarely worth the risk. Birds of Prey may have been the latest adult-orientated superhero story to disappoint at the box office, but the rating is hardly the defining reason why people just weren’t interested in Harley Quinn’s spinoff.
Despite that setback, however, it appears that the DCEU’s The Suicide Squad will be aiming for a similar demographic, and the fact that the three highest-grossing R-rated movies ever made are all comic book adaptations makes it pretty clear that there’s a massive audience out there provided that the material is strong enough.
Marvel Studios might be dragging their feet committing to more mature content, which doesn’t bode well for Deadpool 3 arriving anytime soon, but we’re hearing from our sources – the same ones that told us the Fast and Furious franchise was heading into outer space long before it was confirmed by Michelle Rodriguez, and that Netflix is developing a Witcher prequel – that Sony‘s SPUoMC could soon be set to enter R-rated territory.
According to our intel, the studio don’t want their shared universe to be viewed as an inferior knockoff of the MCU, and one idea being considered to differentiate the two franchises is to have upcoming projects like Kraven the Hunter, a third Venom or second Morbius take things in a darker and more violent direction. Of course, when Sony get their hands on Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, they’re hardly going to have him activate his suit’s instant kill mode in grisly fashion, but the studio certainly do have several characters at their disposal who are ideally suited to R-rated movies, and it’s looking like that’s a route they’re interested in heading down.
