Having just seen his R-rated farce, Deadpool 2, cross the $500 million mark at the worldwide box office and beat the opening weekend total of Solo: A Star Wars Story, you can forgive director David Leitch for taking a moment to bask in the sunlight of success.
During an exclusive interview with ComicBook.com, the filmmaker revealed, among other things, how he came to helm Fox’s recent sequel. According to Leitch, choosing between the X-Force movie and the foul-mouthed mercenary wasn’t always a clear-cut decision, but here’s how he ended up on DP2:
“When I took the job, I had just been hired to develop X-Force, and I was working on my pitch of the world and the characters that I wanted to use into the universe when I got the call about Deadpool 2 and like, ‘Hey, would you be interested in directing Deadpool 2?'”
“And I was like, wow, that’s a big, daunting task, because X-Force was like, ‘Okay, I get to start the universe and then I’m not going to be dealing with the expectation of a sequel, and I’ll have my imprint on something.'”
“Then when I met with Ryan [Reynolds], and we discussed where they thought, Ryan, Rhett [Reese] and Paul [Wernick], where Deadpool 2 was gonna go, and like, it is really an introduction to X-Force. It kinda made sense because I was already sort of working my pitch into that.”
Despite no longer being attached to the 20th Century Fox “super duper fucking group” feature, Leitch disclosed yesterday that he’s open to directing Deadpool 3. Coincidentally, he even has a list of mutants to choose from, should the opportunity present itself.
“There is a list that the studio has of the X-Men characters that they have rights to. If there’s any crossover, like rights with Marvel, then it might be a discussion. But for the most part, we stayed within the stuff that Fox has rights over right now, which is loosely anyone who’s in the X-Men universe, including X-Force and those types of characters. So, that’s kind of how it all worked. I mean, we didn’t try to push to grab stuff that we didn’t have rights over or that Fox didn’t have control over.”
Although Leitch isn’t ready to reveal who the newcomers might be, there are a few familiar faces he wouldn’t mind working with again, with the director saying:
“I know someones that I’d love to work with again. I mean, obviously, I love Cable, Domino, Peter, those would be so fun to have back. In terms of new characters, I don’t know yet. I’ll reserve that ’til I think about it. I mean, there are some really fun characters in the X-Force universe that we hadn’t explored yet and that would be interesting.”
Deadpool 2 has more than made back the $110 million it cost to produce the sequel, which certainly bodes well for a possible Leitch return regarding a third installment. However, the longtime stunt coordinator has seen his stock soar as of late, translating into a directing job on the Fast and Furious spinoff, Hobbs and Shaw, and the motion picture adaptation of Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain.
Therefore, if Leitch is to take up the director mantle for the Merc with a Mouth once again, it wouldn’t be for some time. That being said, we certainly wouldn’t mind seeing him getting behind the camera of a potential threequel, would you?