Ryan Reynolds has confirmed that a new Deadpool movie is in the works at Marvel Studios.
“We’re working on it right now with the whole team,” Reynolds told Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest during an episode of Live with Kelly and Ryan. “We’re over at Marvel, which is the big leagues all of a sudden. It’s kind of crazy.”
The third film in the franchise will be the first distributed under the Marvel Studios banner after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, which produced the first two films. The original Deadpool famously came to fruition after test footage was released in 2014 without the authorization or knowledge of 20th Century Fox and quickly became a viral sensation. Trusting that the positive fan reaction would translate to box office results, Fox green-lit the project for release in 2016 and then doubled down with Deadpool 2 in 2018. The franchise has made $1.5 billion worldwide at the box office, demonstrating that the foul-mouthed title character has some serious staying power.
Still, as recently as May, Reynolds told Entertainment Weekly: “I don’t know that there would be a Deadpool 3. I really don’t. I feel like the character, in order for him to function properly within his own universe, you need to take everything away from him. I don’t think that you can keep doing that.”
Evidently, someone at Marvel or Disney thinks otherwise.
The character Deadpool was once one of only a handful of Marvel characters not owned by Disney, but since Disney’s acquisition of Fox became official in March, Deadpool officially returned to the Marvel banner and became eligible to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
With the announcement of Deadpool 3, Marvel appears to be maintaining some continuity with the two earlier 20th Century Fox films, despite acquiring the rights to the character outright. This differs from its handling of Spider-Man, which Marvel leased to Sony prior to its acquisition by Disney in 2009. In 2017, Sony and Disney reached an agreement to integrate Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Recently, the two companies agreed to extend the relationship for a third stand-alone film following Spider-Man: Far From Home. By recasting Tom Holland as the famous web-slinger, Disney made clear its intention to differentiate from Sony’s two previous franchises starring Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.
As of yet, the film has no official release date set, nor any reported commitments from actors who have previously appeared in the franchise, but that is sure to change as development progresses.
