The DCEU’s Birds of Prey may have disappointed at the box office, but that doesn’t mean that people’s appetites for R-rated comic book movies have simply vanished. After all, Joker made well over a billion dollars, while Logan and both of Deadpool‘s solo outings all did big business despite reducing the potential size of their audience.
If the Merc with a Mouth was still living under Fox’s roof, then an R-rated third installment would only be a formality at this stage. However, with the rights to the character now belonging to Disney and Marvel Studios, there’s been constant speculation about whether or not the staunchly family-friendly Marvel Cinematic Universe would be on board with the idea of venturing into that kind of uncharted territory.
Outgoing Mouse House CEO Bob Iger has previously said that more adult-orientated entries in the MCU can’t be entirely ruled out, but there’s also been rumors of disagreements already brewing behind the scenes between Ryan Reynolds and his new corporate overlords about the proposed direction of Deadpool 3.
However, we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us a Percy Jackson show is in the works and that Now You See Me 3 is in development, both of which were correct – that while the studio are still deciding whether Deadpool 3 is going to be their first R-rated movie or the latest in a long line of PG-13 adventures, the most recent version of the script is being written with the former in mind.
Obviously, with the project still in the earliest stages of development, there’s a lot that can change between now and when Deadpool 3 eventually gets in front of cameras and we’ve already heard that Marvel might be going with PG-13 after Birds of Prey flopped. But as of this moment, at least, the current draft is set to follow the foul-mouthed template set by the first two installments, and we can only hope that the studio decides to keep thing that way.