Rob Liefeld has reputation for hyperbole that’s almost on a par with his infamous inability to draw feet, so you’d best take anything he says about Deadpool 3 with a proportionately sized pinch of salt.
That being said, it’s not exactly difficult to imagine that director Shawn Levy, star Ryan Reynolds, and new recruit Hugh Jackman are pulling out all the stops to ensure the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first-ever R-rated installment lives up to not just that pressure, but the expectations that come with teaming up the Merc with a Mouth and Wolverine in the same movie.
It’s been a long time coming, and while the project remains shrouded in secrecy as production continues, Liefeld said as much as he could in an interview with Collider, where he did a solid job of stoking the flames of anticipation even further.
“Yeah, everyone’s in for a real treat. I’m just happy that everyone is gonna get to experience this again, go down this road. It will have been, I think, seven years. I think probably the appetite for it is gonna be fairly severe given that we’ve not had— I mean, the funny thing is, Deadpool, after being in this long gestation period, not getting filmed, the studio bosses not making it, suddenly, you know, there were only two years between films, 2016 Deadpool, boom.
And trust me, I would be on the Fox lot, they would call me up there, and they’d be like, “Rob, Deadpool’s our highest priority. It’s our biggest grossing picture, dollar for dollar, pound for pound, that we made.” The first one was $50 million, made $800 million, more when you go to the DVD market and all the other ancillaries… People are gonna… what I know will melt your face, and that’s all I’m gonna say. People are in for a great ride, period.”
There must be plenty of internal confidence in Deadpool 3 anyway, seeing as it was the only one of the MCU’s Multiverse Saga projects that didn’t get hit with a delay, so even though Liefeld should always be taken at face value, it’s not out of the question that there may well be faces getting melted straight off the bone in theaters around the world come May of next year.