It was confirmed yesterday that Disney had bought 21st Century Fox for the “I didn’t even know there was that much money” sum of $66 billion, which naturally raised a lot of questions from movie fans everywhere. While it remains to be seen what this means for the future of things like Fox Searchlight, the adult-skewing comic book movies that the studio was pursuing and many other issues, a few questions have been categorically answered.
First up, Deadline reports that Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that the comic book movie universes will be merging at some point. Having enthused about having James Cameron’s Avatar under the Disney umbrella, he went on to say:
“We’re also looking forward to expanding the Marvel cinematic universe to include X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool and reuniting all of the Star Wars movies ever made under one roof, which opens new opportunities for that franchise.”
This is not surprising news, is it? Let the fan art commence.
However, Hugh Jackman has stuck to his retired guns and stated that he’s still not going to be donning the adamantium claws again following his sensational swansong in Logan. He told Collider that “It’s interesting because for the whole 17 years I kept thinking that would be so great, like I would love to see, particularly, Iron Man and the Hulk and Wolverine together. And every time I saw an Avengers movie I could just see Wolverine in the middle of all of them like punching them all on the head. But it was like, ‘Oh well, that’s not gonna happen,’ and it was interesting just when I first saw that headline — it was just the possibility of it and who knows what’s gonna happen, obviously — I was like, ‘Hang on!’ But I think, unfortunately, the ship has sailed for me, but for someone else I would like to see Wolverine in there.”
Meanwhile, his Logan director James Mangold has voiced his concerns that the merger will mean fewer films altogether, as reported by Deadline.
But what does all this mean for Deadpool? Will the Merc with a mouth still enjoy all the freedoms of an R-rating? Well, Bob Iger has confirmed that Deadpool 2 at least will get to stay filthy, telling THR that “It [Deadpool] clearly has been and will be Marvel branded. But we think there might be an opportunity for a Marvel-R brand for something like Deadpool. As long as we let the audiences know what’s coming, we think we can manage that fine.”
Deadpool 2 is released on 1 June. Keep up with the latest genre news with the new issue of SciFiNow.