My initial intention was to review Domee Shi’s Toronto-based animated Pixar film Turning Red, which is, well, already turning heads with its extremely positive reception (and one bad review that completely missed the point, with the internet responding accordingly), but some breaking news this past weekend has put that on hold. The director for Marvel’s tentatively named Deadpool 3 has been announced, and to go with the Canadian actor playing the Canadian character, the Merc with a Mouth’s latest helmer, too, is Canadian.
Considering the R-rated nature of Deadpool and his two live-action movies thus far, it was never necessarily a given that Marvel, or more specifically Disney, would continue making them after purchasing the rights from Fox given the squeaky-clean image the Mouse House likes to convey. It is for this reason that they usually kick these kinds of productions to another studio to avoid associating their name with anything considered less than family friendly. However, if there’s two things Disney likes more than anything, it’s making money while also flexing their dominance at the box office, and Deadpool does that in spades, kids be damned!
Deadpool’s two outings (not counting his *ahem* head-scratching depiction in the less than stellar X-Men Origins: Wolverine) rank second and third in all-time box office grosses for R-rated features – beat only by Todd Phillips’ Joker – so it was a no-brainer to bring Deadpool into the MCU, which is a point Ryan Reynolds and super producer Kevin Feige might have hammered home to Disney, if it they even needed it to begin with. While Marvel have promised that Deadpool will maintain his violent, potty-mouthed ways, they also made it quite clear that they wanted to do things their way, which first meant hiring Bob’s Burgers writers and sisters Lizzie Molyneux-Loeglin and Wendy Molyneux, over writing duo Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick who penned the first two films (Reynolds also received a writing credit for Deadpool 2). Now, they have found their director in Montreal filmmaker Shawn Levy, who, upon reflection, is the perfect choice for a number of reasons.
For one, Reynolds and Levy have established a strong chemistry lately, first working together on surprise hit Free Guy, a film which even I had low expectations for but turned out to be one of the more inspired features of both their careers, not to mention turning a tidy profit while still in the midst of a pandemic. Barely seven months later, the duo’s second collaborative effort, Netflix production The Adam Project, has released to largely positive (if occasionally mixed) reviews, and it is also worth noting that it is hardly a coincidence that the announcement of Levy’s hiring coincides with the release of his latest movie. With Levy in the best creative flow of his career while finding something of a muse in Reynolds, there is a lot to be excited about as they bring Deadpool into the MCU.
The only question now, apart from potential returning cast (especially Josh Brolin as Cable, who also played the villainous Thanos in the MCU), is how Marvel will introduce Deadpool into the MCU, but there are already rumours that he will appear in the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This is said to be the movie that will bring the X-Men into the MCU, and for good reason too Patrick Stewart’s Professor X has been all but confirmed in the film’s recent trailer, but many questions still remain, including if Deadpool will factor given how X-Men-adjacent he is. With the runaway success of Spider-Man: No Way Home proving that such a level of wish fulfillment is a powerful box office motivator for audiences despite an ongoing pandemic, there is a good chance we see the Merc with a Mouth at some capacity before Levy’s threequel hits theatres.