Huge news broke this morning that Disney is acquiring a sizable chunk of 21st Century Fox, including the film production studio 20th Century Fox, but we’ve known this was coming for a few weeks now. That means we’ve had some time to weigh the pros and cons of such a deal, and the consequences that will be felt in the marketplace. Make no mistake, this is not simply about combining superhero movie universes—this is a massive business deal whose impact reaches far wider than multiplexes, and there are a lot of questions still up in the air about what happens next and what this means for the industry.

But on a micro level, one of the big concerns about the merging of 20th Century Fox under the Disney umbrella is whether they’ll continue to make R-rated movies, specifically R-rated superhero movies. With the X-Men franchise getting a bit stale, Fox started taking huge swings in recent years with its superhero properties, competing with Disney-owned Marvel Studios by doing something they wouldn’t do: creating R-rated superhero movies. That began with Deadpool, which scored over $700 million worldwide, and continued with this year’s Logan, which garnered some of the best reviews of Fox’s entire X-Men franchise.

Fox indeed planned on continuing to diversify is superhero content by leaning hard into genres—The New Mutants is a horror film, while X-Men: Dark Phoenix is going to space—but with this Disney deal now official, all of that is up in the air. Deadpool 2 hits theaters next summer and is Rated R, but will R-rated superhero movies continue to be a staple at the Disney-owned Fox, or will they fall by the wayside so Disney can keep its squeaky-clean image?

Disney CEO Bob Iger hopped on a call this morning to answer some questions, and he specifically brought up Deadpool when talking about his desire to continue making sequels, after which he noted that R-rated Marvel movies could still have a place under this new deal:

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Image via Marvel

That’s a pretty non-committal answer, but granted this deal is still in the early stages (it won’t officially close for over a year). While it’s true that Disney itself doesn’t make R-rated movies, it does have a history of allowing companies it owns to do so, like Miramax. If 20th Century Fox is set up as its own arm, like Marvel Studios or Pixar, it’s possible Disney allows them to forge ahead as-planned with more R-rated superhero movies. But if Disney/Marvel Studios wants to combine the characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that may pose a serious problem—consistency of tone is everything, and one imagines if Disney has invested so much money into building the Marvel Studios brand as something kids can enjoy, adding Deadpool to the mix muddles the waters and threatens to turn consumers off the brand entirely—again, this is about more than movies, it's about merchandizing, TV spinoffs, etc.

And make no mistake, this is all about branding. Disney is not acquiring Fox because it wants to expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe or make interesting movies, it’s doing so to compete in the direct-to-consumer marketplace, increase its library of content, and thus increase its market presence. The X-Men joining the MCU is secondary to all of that, and thus not exactly essential. And if Disney does want to meld the Fox Marvel movies/characters with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s a good chance they’ll want to maintain the MCU brand they’ve built thus far, an essential part of which is appealing to kids.

More interesting to me is what happens to Fox Searchlight and Fox 2000, smaller Fox umbrella studios that specialize in creating content for adults and teenagers. Iger reportedly said he is “very interested in what Searchlight accomplished and Fox 2000, and we fully intend to stay in those businesses.” Here’s hoping.

As for R-rated Marvel movies, Iger isn’t counting it out, but again it’s early days. Would Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios even be interested in creating R-rated films? Would adding an R-rated character or two to the MCU threaten to alienate families, especially as Disney gets ready to launch its own streaming service? And if the Fox Marvel movies do merge into the MCU, how in the world could Marvel Studios up its quantity output while maintaining quality? There are a lot of unanswered questions to ponder, and it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

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Image via 20th Century Fox
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Image via Marvel Studios