In the eyes of Deadpool creator and all-around comic book mainstay Rob Liefeld, Fox’s planned X-Force movie is the inevitable next step for Wade Wilson and Co.
Headed up by writer-director Drew Goddard, the nascent team-up flick isn’t expected to set the wheels in motion until later this year, given Goddard’s ongoing commitment to Bad Times at El Royale. In fact, Wade Wilson himself, Ryan Reynolds, recently cooled excitement when he confirmed that there’s no script in place for X-Force – not yet, at least – though when the end product does light up theaters in 20XX, it’ll aim to expand the current X-Men universe.
Or so says David Leitch. The filmmaker was in attendance at last night’s red carpet event for Deadpool 2, where Variety caught up with Leitch to discuss the Merc’s next steps beyond 2018. Which brings us to the current status of X-Force…
They’ve been developing it for awhile, and Drew Goddard is on board. He’s a great writer and a great filmmaker. I think they’re really trying to take these characters and expand this universe. With those people all creatively involved, and Josh and Zazi’s characters all coming back, I think it would be fun for everybody.
Indeed, Leitch’s comments align with those made by Ryan Reynolds, who went on record earlier this week to tease new characters and a possible R rating for X-Force.
It’s all story first. I don’t think anybody’s thinking about the rating. I mean, my sort of wild guess would be that it would be an R-rated movie, but again, right now we’re just assembling the troops to figure out what story we would tell. And it’s a ways away from shooting still, and I don’t even have an idea as to the exact date. But yeah, we’ll see. Story first though.
Still no mention of a possible release window for X-Force, but we assume 20th Century Fox will hold fire until 2020 so that Simon Kinberg’s Dark Phoenix, The New Mutants and the long-delayed Gambit movie all have room to breath.