While studios and audiences are well aware that comicbook properties are today's hot tickets, some of those characters remain risky propositions. Case in point: Marvel's Deadpool, a violent and mentally unstable mercenary who eventually appeared in X-Force comics and was played on screen by Ryan Reynolds in Fox's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Known as the "Merc with a Mouth", Deadpool has a knack for breaking the fourth wall in the comics, a trait that would be carried over into the necessarily R-rated film. Since one of those scripted meta mentions would include calling out Fox studio executives by name, it's plain to see why the bigwigs are hesitant to put serious cash behind the picture. However, that's not to say that progress on Deadpool isn't marching slowly forward. Hit the jump for more.
During a recent press tour for his animated movie, Turbo, Reynolds talked openly about the progress of Deadpool, including the scope, rating and content of the picture. Here's what Reynolds had to say (via JoBlo):
"[In] its current iteration the movie’s actually very small,. There’s minimal impact to the studio, which is the way we’re kind of presenting it to them. We’re saying ‘Look, the budget is minimal. Therefore, can we do this the way it should be done?’ Which unfortunately needs a Rated R [age certificate] or it needs those elements. The script is probably available online, it leaked. But it’s very meta, I mean the character knows he’s in a movie, he knows he’s in a comic book. He names studio executives in the script. So, it’s kind of a risky property. But, you know, we’ll see. It's actually, within the last couple of weeks, taken a few very, very small tiptoes forward. In our lifetime? Yeah, I think so. I think if I were a betting man it’ll get made, eventually. I mean it’s just been developed to high heaven. It has great people around it, so we’ll see."
With Jeff Wadlow scripting an X-Force movie that has Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld attached to consult, it's possible that Fox's mega-mutant movie will get off the ground first as a test to see whether Deadpool and Cable spin-offs would be a worthwhile venture. In other words, I'd be surprised if we saw either of those standalone characters in films before X-Force's planned debut in 2016.