The character of Deadpool was all set to appear in the first-mooted X-Force movie, the man who was set to direct it has confirmed.
“I’ve always loved Deadpool and I tried to rehabilitate him in my X-Force movie because, like the rest of the fans, I felt like they totally screwed it up in X-Men: Origins,” Jeff Wadlow told Collider. “I had actually been talking to Ryan Reynolds about playing him in my X-Force movie, but my X-Force movie was much more focused on Cable and the New Mutants becoming this paramilitary unit. Fox was trying to decide whether they going to do the Deadpool solo movie or my X-Force movie. Fortunately, they picked the Deadpool solo movie because it’s great.”
Of course, now the tables have turned, and X-Force is being introduced in Deadpool 2, and it seems likely that the X-Force movie currently in development from Drew Goddard will follow the lead of the Deadpool movies, rather than the other way around. That wouldn’t have been the case with this earlier version of the project.
“When I pitched for it, I said, ‘If X-Men is about the mutants that get to go to private school, I want to make a movie about the mutants that go to public school,” Wadlow said. “They’re the kids that don’t have a jet swooping down to help them, with Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. What’s it like when you don’t have those guys helping you out and you’re forced to figure out who you are in this world?”
Some concept art from what might have been Wadlow’s era of the project surfaced back in 2015, apparently from a 2013 screenplay, and there’s a little bit of that “public school” and “paramilitary” vibe to the lineup, and you can spot the evolution with the New Mutants characters involved, too.
Check it out…
Obviously you can’t have an X-Force movie without Cable, and we’re about to meet a different version of Domino in Deadpool 2. John “Thunderbird” Proudstar has since made his live action debut on The Gifted TV series. We can see Sam “Cannonball” Guthrie popping off in the background. My guess as to the identity of the woman on the far left is probably Ilyana “Magik” Rasputin. In other words, this version of the X-Force movie had much in common with the New Mutants movie we’re (eventually) getting.
Jeff Wadlow’s new movie, Truth Or Dare, lands in cinemas this weekend.