The love fest currently running between Free Guy and The Adam Project director Shawn Levy and star Ryan Reynolds has reached a new milestone today, as THR reports that Levy has been tapped to step in as director on the upcoming, Marvel-produced Deadpool 3.
The Deadpool films—which have been mothballed since 2018, in part because of the high-profile transfer of all of Fox’s X-Men-adjacent projects over to Disney—have always had a bit of a struggle in finding directors. Most notably, Deadpool director Tim Miller (who’d managed to score a major hit with his directing debut) left the second film, reportedly over creative differences with Reynolds. David Leitch ended up handling that sequel.
“Creative differences” does not appear to be a problem, as yet, between Reynolds and Levy, though; Reynolds has starred in Levy’s last two films, the video game-set Free Guy, and this week’s new Netflix time travel movie The Adam Project.
The big question looming over Deadpool 3, of course, is how far Disney will be willing to go with it. Both of the franchise’s films were hard R-rated movies, employing a profane sense of humor that was both well-suited to The Merc With The Mouth, and a refreshing contrast to the resolutely PG-13 tone of most major superhero fare.
Levy is not, we can’t help but point out, necessarily the guy you turn to when you want a lot of scatalogical humor and gunfire; he came up in kids’ TV, before scoring major hits with the Night At The Museum franchise. Even his “adult” comedies, like Tina Fey and Steve Carell’s Date Night, tend to be on the tamer side.
Of course, if there’s one lesson that Deadpool’s game of musical director chairs has illustrated, it’s that Reynolds is the heart and soul of the character, and the steward of the franchise’s tone. He’ll also be teaming back up with writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who worked on the first two films; Bob’s Burgers and The Great North writers Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin have both also worked on the franchise’s third installment.