Ever since rumors first swirled that Disney was looking to purchase 20th Century Fox, fans have been wondering if this meant the end of the road for R-rated superhero movies. Indeed, just as this acquisition started bubbling up, Fox was hitting its stride with the R-rated hits Deadpool and Logan. Traditionally, Disney does not release R-rated movies itself (in that past that fell to its subsidiaries like Touchstone Pictures), but more to the point Marvel Studios also has not yet released an R-rated film and the execs in charge of the MCU have said they have no immediate plans to do so.
The Merc with a Mouth gets a new writing duo as the franchise heads fully under the Marvel umbrella.
2016’s Deadpool was years in the making, and even when Fox agreed to greenlight it they did so with a very small budget, concerned the R-rating would knee-cap its box office potential. It grossed $782.6 million worldwide, and 2018’s Deadpool 2 grossed a nearly identical $785.8 million worldwide. Clearly there’s money to be made in keeping this franchise true to its foul-mouthed core, and it’ll be interesting to see just how hard of an R Deadpool 3 might carry if Marvel Studios goes that direction.
There’s no guarantee of a rating just yet, and we’ll have to see how this script turns out, but if this report holds true that’s good news for fans who enjoy watching Reynolds’ Merc with a Mouth spout filthy joke after filthy joke. And it should make things very interesting when he’s integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I can’t be the only one who kind of wants to see Chris Evans reprise his Captain America role just to react to whatever graphic descriptions come out of Deadpool’s mouth.
So it’s good news all around. Deadpool 3 is firmly in development, it will almost certainly be part of the MCU, and it will (hopefully) be R-rated. Call it a, uh, happy ending following a couple years of nerves and uncertainty.
via Collider