Almost fourteen months after Ryan Reynolds posted an image on social media confirming he’d held talks with Marvel Studios over Deadpool 3, Kevin Feige has finally made his first public comments on the hotly anticipated superhero blockbuster.
Up until now, the company’s Chief Creative Officer and architect of the cinematic universe has remained silent on the Merc with a Mouth’s impending return, leading to much speculation about his thoughts on Fox’s foul-mouthed, R-rated franchise bleeding into the MCU. And luckily, the news is almost entirely good.
We say almost, because Feige has confirmed that Deadpool 3 will be R-rated and act as official MCU canon, but filming isn’t going to start until 2022 at the earliest. While that’s got to be disheartening for the millions of fans patiently waiting for some concrete updates, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise.
After all, Reynolds is one of the busiest actors in Hollywood, and jumped straight into Netflix’s time traveling adventure The Adam Project a little over a week after he’d wrapped the streaming service’s globetrotting actioner Red Notice. Presumably, he’ll shoot another one of those dozen projects on his plate before suiting up as Deadpool again, and though Feige wouldn’t confirm an exact start date, he was full of praise for the leading man regardless.
“It will be rated R and we are working on a script right now, and Ryan’s overseeing a script right now. It will not be filming this year. Ryan is a very busy, very successful actor. We’ve got a number of things we’ve already announced that we now have to make, but it’s exciting for it to have begun. Again, a very different type of character in the MCU, and Ryan is a force of nature, which is just awesome to see him bring that character to life.”
Based on how things are shaping up for the MCU schedule-wise, Deadpool 3 likely won’t be in theaters until mid-2023 at the earliest. However, that gives the year an impressive quartet of movies if the other three wind up being Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Fantastic Four, which looks likely seeing as they’re the only titles to have been announced but not handed a locked in release date as of yet.