If you want to introduce a character to mainstream audiences that will be able to go on and headline a series of successful spin-offs, clearly the best way to do it is to put him in a shitty movie, give him half a dozen lines, make him unrecognizable from the movie star that plays him, sew up his mouth and cut off his head. Oh, wait.
Despite their counter-intuitive approach to franchise expansion, Fox are moving ahead with a “Deadpool” movie, and according to rumors the studio is in talks with “Zombieland” scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to write the script. For those unfamiliar with the character, which probably includes everyone who saw his four minutes of screentime in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” Deadpool is a wisecracking, disfigured mercenary, who’s gained a cult following for the “Hellzapoppin”-style, fourth-wall-breaking nature of his adventures, a nature which, according to creator Rob Liefeld, will be retained in any future movie.
Lauren Shuler Donner, the producer of the X-Men franchise, said a few months back that Ryan Reynolds would again play Deadpool, despite signing on to play a rival superhero in “Green Lantern,” and that the spin-off would reboot the character completely. We don’t have any great love for the character, and we have a feeling that this’ll turn out as another “Elektra,” if it ever happens, but Reese and Wernick are pretty good matches for the tone of the piece. It’s worth noting though, the story is not 100% confirmed and it’s likely that the studio are meeting with a number of writers at this point. But some sites constantly complaining about dubious “take-a-meeting” reports are apparently reversing their position.