The Deadpool Movie Isn't Dead Yet

After Ryan Reynolds appearance as Deadpool in the X-men spin off Wolverine, he was said to have signed on for a solo franchise starring the character. All was fine on that front until Reynolds also signed on to star in Warner Bros big screen adaptation of Green Lantern. If Green Lantern had been the success everyone thought it would be, WB would have done everything in their power to block Reynolds from doing the Deadpool movie. That is at very least until they were done with their originally purposed franchise. Now with Green Lantern having been a colossal turd at the box office as well as the way it was received critically, it looks like a sequel is only a pipe dream for hopefuls and long time fans like my pal Matt Rapier.

Fox knows they have the ball back in their court now, especially with a Green Lantern sequel as good as dead and Reynolds still excited to get back into the role. The only problem they're facing now is how true to the source material they should take the film. In order for the movie to be true to the comics it needs to be rated R, similar to how Watchmen was. The only problem with that being Fox had a stake in Watchmen as well as Warner Bros, and it stunk up the box office in comparison to expectations and the over 100 million it cost to bring it to the big screen. So unless they can find a cost effective way to bring Deadpool to the screen as an R rated film, while keeping the core of the character intact, we'll either end up with a PG-13 release or the movie falls back into development hell for another decade.

Well it appears a rated R Deapool may be closer to happening than anyone might have thought. At last weekends Amazing Arizona Comic Con Rob Liefeld and Scott Lobdell said they may or may not have seen eight minutes of R rated test footage from the film and it was amazing. The quote is as follows:

"They've got a great director on the movie, they've got a great script. I may or may have not seen some sort of test of footage that would blow your mind if you saw it and go holy crap and that's Deadpool in costume. Katana swords, guns, shooting people’s faces off and making me laugh. And I may or may not have seen something that looks just like that. And you've got what would amount to the first R Rated X-Men movie. Because that script is R Rated.

They may or may not have wanted to shoot eight minutes to see how it would play. And all I can tell you, it's close. It’s closer that it's even been to going, or going Naaah, that's too scary a proposition to make a R Rated Deadpool movie.”`

I think if Deadpool does end up seeing the light of day the only way to do it would be like the described 8 minutes of footage. I think Wolverine should/could have probably went over better at least critically if it had the freedom that an R rating brings to the story. For me Watchmen was one of the best superhero or graphic novel adaptation's to ever be done, and that was only because of how true to the source material Snyder was allowed to bring the film.