Free Guy Director Says Deadpool 3 Job Is “Enticing”

Stranger Things boss Shawn Levy is a Deadpool mega fan. Would he be the perfect choice to take on the Merc With a Mouth's threequel?

Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool
Photo: 20th Century Fox / Disney / Marvel

We’ve known for a while that Marvel Studios has been looking to make a third Deadpool movie with Ryan Reynolds, and that Bob’s Burgers vets Lizzie Molyneux-Loeglin and Wendy Molyneux have been hard at work on the screenplay, but Marvel fans are still very eager for updates on the project.

Though Reynolds made his first MCU connection (kinda) by suiting up as Deadpool and joining Taika Waititi’s amiable Kronan rock warrior Korg for a Free Guy trailer YouTube reaction video last month, there hasn’t been any substantial news on Deadpool’s forthcoming MCU presence for a while.

In the midst of doing the press rounds for Free Guy, Reynolds and director Shawn Levy have inevitably been fielding questions from journalists about the Deadpool threequel because they seem to have a really good working relationship, and Levy is also known to be a huge Deadpool fan.

It’s unsurprising that some people are putting two and two together and proposing four – having just worked with Reynolds for Disney, could Levy be the final piece of the puzzle for Marvel Studios’ future Deadpool plans?

Ad – content continues below

“I’m going to avoid specific comment on that, but I’ll just say I’m a mega fan of Deadpool and of Marvel movies in general,” Levy told our reporter Don Kaye. “And so that is certainly an enticing thought.”

Enticing indeed, but we shall have to wait and see if Levy will be as good a match for Marvel as he is for Reynolds: the director says the pair “eat and breathe” their movies but also value spending time with their respective families, so their work ethics mesh well.

“We hit it hard,” Levy says. “We shoot fast. We like to work efficiently. We like to make decisions quickly, which really helps when you’re as aligned with each other as Ryan and I are. And I also got lucky, because he knew going in that [his Free Guy role] was not Wade Wilson. This was a character that had an innocence and a wide-eyed optimism and was more like Buddy the Elf, or Tom Hanks in Big, than it was like Deadpool.”

Reynolds did have an update on Deadpool 3 for fans this week, saying that there’s a good chance the movie will shoot next year. “We’re really actively developing it and getting it into pretty good shape. What the hell month is it? August? Oh next year? [Chances are] probably pretty damn good. I’d say 70%.”

But we may not have to wait until Deadpool 3 is released to see Wade Wilson in action. Reynolds also seems open to popping up in a different MCU installment before his highly anticipated solo debut arrives.

“I think both [options] are pretty warranted. I think you’re always gonna zig when everybody’s expecting you to zag when it comes to that character. As long as Disney’s open to doing some pretty wildly divergent or having some wildly divergent uses of Deadpool, then I dig it, man. I think it’s all great.”

Ad – content continues below

Free Guy is set to be released on August 13. Jodie Comer, Joe Keery, and Taika Waititi star alongside Reynolds in the film, which is a sci-fi action comedy about an open world video game NPC who becomes self-aware and has to save the game before it gets deleted by its devs. You can read our review right here.