Deadpool: It’s Affect on Hollywood & R-Rated Movies

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Yesterday, I posted an article analysing the effect of a successful Deadpool movie may potentially have on Hollywood.

In this article, I suggested that Hollywood has totally miss the point regarding Deadpool’s commercial success and instead of accepting that giving fans something different, yet something they want, completely works, just making a movie R-Rated for the hell of it probably won’t.

No there are further developments that apply to my argument. One good and one potentially bad.

Deadpool: the R-Rated Success

R-RATED MOVIES SELL!!!! Is pretty much the slogan flying around Hollywood at the moment, given Deadpool’s overwhelming box office success. Whether the movie will sell just because it’s R-Rated or whether it sells because the R-Rated status makes the movie better, will be interpreted by whichever studio abides by this new creed.

Nevertheless, two new movie developments have occurred since posting yesterday’s article and if reports are to be believed, two more comic book movies may be given the R-Rated treatment.

Good & Bad News

The first is good news (well, it is in this geek’s humble opinion).

It seems that a Spawn remake is in the works and is thought to be not only R-Rated, but “a hard R”. According to the awesome creator of Spawn, Todd McFarlane, the script for the movie has been completed and he’s currently shopping it around Hollywood.

I believe that the positive success of Deadpool will make selling this “hard R” script a little easier, because now Hollywood have proof that R-Rated movies can sell and sell big.

But looking at this a little deeper, Spawn is actually a decent model to try and replicate the success of Deadpool.

Why?

Because the Spawn character is perfect for an R-Rated movie (some could argue, even more than Deadpool was).

Because Spawn has an awesome cult following. Although not nearly as big as Deadpool, it still could make the difference and make the movie quite lucrative for the studio producing it.

If you want more information regarding the new Spawn movie, then go read this totally awesome interview with Todd McFarlane here at ComicBook.com

On the other side of the coin, there is also a bit of POTENTIALLY bad news too. I’m not sure it’ll be TOTALLY bad news, but for me it’s a clear indication that Hollywood are wanting to jump on the R-Rated movie wagon.

There are indications that third and final Wolverine movie will also be R-Rated.

I’ll be honest, I’m in two minds about it. I love Hugh Jackman, but I haven’t quite loved his Wolverine movies. I just hope that the R-Rating will allow him, director James Mangold and writer Michael Green to make a movie us fans deserve.

On the other hand, this is a very obvious move by Fox to jump on the Deadpool bandwagon and try to piggyback on the success. I mean, it COULD work, but will it? Do all parties involved plan on giving the fans a Wolverine movie they actually want?

I respectfully doubt it. Judging by the previous Wolverine movies, I don’t think they even know what the fans want in a Wolverine movie. The closest they came, for me, is the opening sequence of Wolverine: Origins. The epic depiction of Wolverine and Sabretooth in the various wars through time. The rest of the movie was total garbage, which, I think made it even more disappointing for me. They were on the edge of something cool and then took the wrong turn in the road.

Essentially, if this Wolverine movie is R-Rated and Wolverine sprays blood, guts and human juice all over the place, without giving the fans exactly what they want, then it’s going to fail. And it’s going to fail big.

But there’s a small part of me harbouring hope for the project. I hope that taking the shackles off the character will inspire the creative team behind the movie to write something that pleases the audience and grants the studio commercial success.

It won’t be the same as Deadpool, nothing will, but I hope it has enough success to hammer home the point to Hollywood: give the fans what they want and they’ll come and see your movie.

It’s not rocket surgery, is it?

What do you think?

Let me know via Twitter or Facebook

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