Looks like Wade Wilson is returning to his X:MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE days as the Merc with a Mouth has apparently been silenced over a Disney joke in the upcoming DEADPOOL 2. Ryan Reynolds, speaking to EW, said that it was a "sore spot" in having to remove the joke, although he did think it was a wise move to do so.
“This is a sore spot for me because there’s a joke in the movie that is not in the movie now because — I’m probably not even allowed to say this — Fox made me take it out. It had more to do with Disney, and they made me take it out. As I look back at it, I think maybe that was a wise decision.” Surprisingly, there is still a running FROZEN gag that IS in the film, so I'm now very curious what the joke was that had to be cut, even if Reynolds thinks it was a wise decision to oust it.
Obviously, this comes on the heels of the forthcoming Disney/Fox merger, that would see the House of Mouse acquire a shit-ton of Fox film properties that would include the Merc with a Mouth, so perhaps it's a tapdance around the complexities of that deal. No one seems to know what the ramifications of that deal will be, including Reynolds.
“I really genuinely don’t know a thing about it. I read that [chairman and CEO] Bob Iger felt that there’s plenty of room in that universe to have a rated-R character like Deadpool. This is completely conjecture on my part, but I wouldn’t imagine that Disney bought Fox to dismantle it or something like that. I think that Disney bought Fox so it could have that in its arsenal.”
While everyone seems to be most excited about the Disney/Fox merger merely to see Wolverine scrape his claws against Captain America's shield and have Ben Grimm punch The Hulk, there's still a lot to be said about one company owning so much of the popular IP's out there. Surely, it could work out just fine, but I think I'll always be a little put off by Disney having so much control over every slice of entertainment we devour and there's no way in hell that the first DEADPOOL would've happened under the MCU banner. I guess we'll just have to enjoy what we have while we have it until we find out we'll have it again just like it was. You get all that?
DEADPOOL 2 slashes into theaters on May 18th.