Marvel a few weeks ago unveiled its entire MCU Phase 4 lineup, including several movies and TV series that will be launched at regular intervals over the course of the next 2 years. Notable absences from its list include several of Marvel’s most popular franchises like Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Spider-Man. But Marvel also confirmed it’s developing other MCU adventures that will be part of the upcoming fifth phase, including sequels for Captain Marvel and Black Panther, as well as the third Guardians film. Unfortunately, the Deadpool franchise wasn’t addressed at Comic-Con, even though Marvel said that projects based on Fantastic Four and X-Men are in development.
Deadpool is technically a part of the X-Men franchise, so that can be interpreted as a sort of confirmation. But then Ryan Reynolds stepped up to brilliantly troll Deadpool fans by suggesting the third installment in the series might be included in Phase 5. Now, we have new info that suggests Marvel’s Deadpool 3 might be very different from what we’ve seen in the past.
Phase 4 ends on November 5th, 2021, considering everything Kevin Feige & Co said. That’s when Thor 4 launches, and that’s the last Phase 4 title to have been confirmed during the Comic-Con panel. That means phase 5 debuts in 2022, and we already have three MCU dates that have no projects attached to them. Phase 5 would likely span across a couple of years at least, if not more. That doesn’t mean Deadpool 3 will definitely be one of them, just that we have a long time to wait for the film to hit theaters, assuming it does indeed launch in Phase 5.
Talking to Yahoo Movies about his latest success at the box office with Hobbs & Shaw, David Leitch also talked about Deadpool 3. The exec said that Marvel’s Deadpool doesn’t have to be as foul-mouthed as before.
“It’s rated R, so that’s not necessarily the [MCU] brand, but he doesn’t necessarily need to be R and [Disney] don’t necessarily need to only make PG-13 movies,” he said. “I think we’ll find a happy ground.”
From the way he’s framing that response, it sure sounds like Marvel is developing Deadpool 3 and Leitch, who directed Deadpool 2, might be involved. He did acknowledge that adapting the hero to the MCU might be more difficult, suggesting again that he might be privy to inside information about the movie.
Losing the R rating wouldn’t be a disaster for the franchise, and Marvel could find ways to make the character just as entertaining as before. “There’s a lot of mystery still surrounding what they want to do with Deadpool in [Disney’s] Marvel world but I think, from discussions that I’ve heard, it’s all positive,” Leitch said. “I think that they’re just trying to figure a way in as Deadpool’s hard.”
We might be reading too much into what Leitch had to say, but if history taught us anything it’s that you have to pay close attention to what execs involved with Marvel projects say. It might pay off later down the line.
The director added that he loves Deadpool and he’d love to return to the director’s seat for future movies. He also said that a crossover with Blade would be “very cool,” because they “both are swordsmen.” Whether Leitch gets involved in the making of Deadpool 3 or not, it sure looks like we’ll have to wait a while to get specific details about the film. And we’ll definitely collect more conspiracy theory yarn in the meantime.
