Though he’s yet to settle on a finalized script, Drew Goddard is clearly making headway on his planned X-Force ensemble movie.
How do we know? Well, in anticipation of Deadpool 2 – May 18th is the date for your diaries – Ryan Reynolds sat down with Collider to discuss the Merc With a Mouth, along with Fox’s future plans for its X-Men universe.
The Merc’s second solo outing naturally took precedence, given it’s due to hit theaters this Friday, but when Reynolds was quizzed about that X-Force spinoff, he was surprisingly forthcoming, admitting that he simply can’t wait to work with Drew Goddard and take Deadpool in a slightly new direction. We’re about to see Wade Wilson share the screen with two big-name characters in Domino and Cable, but for X-Force, Goddard’s team-up movie will thrust our anti-hero into the midst of a bona fide ensemble.
I just wanna work with Drew. I mean, I love him and he has such an interesting take on where he wants to take that world. I see it being a real ensemble on a lot of levels just because I think it’s interesting for Deadpool to kinda function in the way he does in his own universe. You always get to sort of find some way to position him as the underdog or take everything away from him, but for him to function in an ensemble [in X-Force] is a lot of fun.
Story-wise, Ryan Reynolds refused to be drawn about possible clues, as Drew Goddard is yet to finalize the script, let alone agree to a firm production start date. So perhaps those allegations that X-Force was about to begin filming this fall are bogus? Who knows, but for now, Reynolds is simply excited to get the ball rolling.
I think there’s a real opportunity to not burden the narrative by shattering Wade’s life, so then at the beginning our movie you get to have him just be part of the team, which is obviously a very challenging prospect for someone like Wade Wilson. So, I’m really excited about that. I’m excited about a couple new characters that we’re talking about. And I’m really especially excited to work with Drew. He’s just amazing.
Finally, the actor then touched base on the possibility of an R rating for X-Force, noting that while he fully expects the end product to skew towards the same audience as Deadpool 2, settling on a firm story outline is really the first port of call.
It’s all story first. I don’t think anybody’s thinking about the rating. I mean, my sort of wild guess would be that it would be an R-rated movie, but again, right now we’re just assembling the troops to figure out what story we would tell. And it’s a ways away from shooting still, and I don’t even have an idea as to the exact date. But yeah, we’ll see. Story first though.
Up first for Drew Goddard is Bad Times at El Royale ahead of its release in October, before the director veers into full-blown X-Force territory. That tells us Fox’s planned team-up movie is at least another two years out, which opens up some breathing space for Dark Phoenix, The New Mutants and the long-delayed Gambit movie.