We finally have our first proper look at Deadpool 3, officially titled Deadpool And Wolverine. The teaser trailer that aired during Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday revealed some interesting new details about the upcoming superhero comedy.
From the looks of it, after literally getting his wig snatched by some mysterious thugs outside his front door, “Marvel Jesus” will be traveling through time and the multiverse to fix the MCU, courtesy of Matthew Macfadyen and the Time Variance Authority, the organization that was last seen in the second season of Loki. With all the references to past films we caught, and even what looks like a giant old 20th Century Fox logo crashed to the ground, things are going to get very meta.
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Here’s a look at the newly revealed poster.
So much has happened since we first heard that Deadpool 3 would be officially moving forward, bringing not only Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson into the Marvel Cinematic Universe but Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine as well. Filming began last spring, and then paused due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, and then started up again in the fall. On January 24, Reynolds announced on social media that filming had wrapped.
Reynolds announced the start of filming in a similar way. Here’s how he revealed that Jackman would be returning as Wolverine. The news caused an avalanche of speculation about the upcoming sequel, some of which we can now confirm.
- Deadpool And Wolverine is due to be released on July 26, 2024
- It will be the 34th film in the MCU, and the first to have an R rating
- It’s the third collaboration between Reynolds and director Shawn Levy, who worked together previously on Free Guy and The Adam Project
- Levy also previously directed Hugh Jackman in Real Steel
What’s the movie about?
Reynolds gave an interview in 2021 in which he talked about having the idea for a Wolverine and Deadpool road-trip movie. This past June, on the Post-Credits podcast, Reese and Wernick said that it will be a “fish-out-of-water” story and said they’re excited about all the ripe comedy material they’ll have to work with now that they’re free to reference the entire MCU. Here’s the official logline: “The irresponsible hero Deadpool will change the history of the MCU with Wolverine.”
In a recent interview to promote his latest film Argylle, director Matthew Vaughn (who also directed X-Men: First Class) said that he had seen some footage of the new Deadpool film, and that it had the potential to revitalize Marvel’s flagging franchise. “The Marvel universe is about to have a jolt, and it’s going to bring that body back to life,” he said. “I think Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are about to save the whole Marvel universe.”
The original Deadpool writing team of Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick came on board the project just prior to filming, replacing Bob’s Burgers writers Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin, who were originally attached. Zeb Wells, who has written for several Marvel Comics titles, is also credited as a writer on the project, as well as Reynolds and Levy.
In a video posted in September of 2022, Reynolds and Jackman teased fans (and took a jab at Marvel’s famously strict spoiler lockdown policy) with an explainer about Wolverine’s return that didn’t explain much of anything.
Many fans thought Wolverine had a fitting end at the conclusion of Logan, but it looks like Deadpool 3 will be playing a bit with the timelines of the X-Men films, and the MCU has already introduced a multiverse that allows for the existence of parallel realities. So the film may be attempting to have it both ways—bringing the character back without undoing the emotional resonance of his previous farewell. In an interview with French newspaper Le Parisien, Jackman said that he would be playing a “double role” in the film. We also know that he’ll be wearing a blue and yellow costume, as seen in the first promotional photo.
Who else is in it?
Many returning cast members from the Deadpool-verse can be seen in the trailer, including Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Shioli Kutsuna as Yukio, Karan Soni as taxi driver Dopinder, and Rob Delaney as X-Force member Peter. We don’t yet know whether any of them will actually take part in the adventure or if this is all we’re getting.
We knew that Macfadyen was in the film, but now we know that he’ll play a character employed by the TVA. We also spotted Aaron Stanford, who will reprise his role as Pyro from X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. Joining the cast from yet another corner of the Marvel Universe is Jennifer Garner, reprising the role of Elektra from the 2003's Daredevil and its 2005 spinoff Elektra. Emma Corrin has been tapped to play the film’s villain.
A few leaked set photos have also led to speculation of additional characters from the X-Men comics and another villain’s identity (which we won’t spoil here). Reynolds cheekily responded with a thread of more “leaks” of “very real” set photos.
Technically, they already were. We’ve previously met two of them in the Earth-616 universe: Ms. Marvel and Namor. More recently, the second mid-credits scene at the end of The Marvels made it even more explicit, bringing back Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Hank McCoy, or the X-Man known as Beast, last seen in 2014's X-Men: Days Of Future Past. That scene took place in another universe in which Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) didn’t have any children and became a hero called Binary, so it’s not currently connected to the main MCU except through the portal Monica (Teyonah Parris) closed after crossing over.
Levy teased in an essay he wrote for Esquire that he wanted to include a reference to the scene in Return Of The Jedi in which Darth Vader threatens to turn Leia to the Dark Side if Luke doesn’t join him. Levy had the crew watch the scene and study “how it was photographed, how it was blocked, the framing, the tempo.” According to Levy, any “keen Star Wars fan” will get the reference in Deadpool 3 when they see it.