Disney Has Promised to Keep Deadpool R-Rated

After Disney’s acquisition of Fox this year, many fans were worried that the family-friendly company would try to clean up the R-rated world of Deadpool and shove him into a PG-13 MCU film. However, the writers of the films, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, have been guaranteed by Disney that the company wants the Merc with a Mouth as raunchy as ever. In an interview with EW, the duo spoke about making the third Deadpool film under the watchful eye of Mickey Mouse.

Wernick said the following:

We’ve got several projects with (Ryan Reynolds) in addition to the Deadpool universe. I think the party line and truth is we’re all still figuring it out. Marvel has promised to continue to let us play in the R-rated Deadpool universe, and the hope is that they will also let us veer into the MCU a little bit as well and play in that sandbox. Our feeling and Ryan’s feeling is that it’s got to be the right idea, it’s got to be great… I think once we collectively agree what idea that great idea is we’ll be off to the races. Ryan’s super-busy, we’ve got a lot of projects lined up, but we wake up thinking about Deadpool, and we go to sleep thinking about Deadpool.

Disney has been pretty straightforward with the fact that they were planning to let Deadpool stay R-rated, basically arguing there’s no reason to mess with a good thing. However, the studio has recently shown a lot of shyness towards Fox’s more out-there Marvel content despite early promises of giving everything a fair shake. That had led to doubt that they were really going to let Deadpool be the fourth-wall-breaking, cussing, violent assassin that he is.

Learning that the writers themselves are working under the assumption that Deadpool will stay Deadpool is the first real confirmation that Disney is actually letting them do this thing. Coupled with Ryan Reynolds’ recent visit to Marvel Studios, it seems like they’re listening to the creative team on this one, which in fairness is what has often led the MCU to shine (Edgar Wright notwithstanding).

As Wernick said, the movie is a long way off, and given we know Deadpool isn’t part Marvel’s next phase of content, it probably won’t drop until well into the next decade.