Bob Iger Reveals When Marvel Studios Will Make An R-Rated Comic Book Movie


The monumental success of Deadpool, which continues to make a huge amount of money at the box office just under a month after it was released, proves that there are legs in an R-rated superhero movie after all.

Twentieth Century Fox had huge reservations about releasing Deadpool with such a rating, which is why they reduced its budget to just $58 million. To put it into context, Avengers: Age Of Ultron ultimately cost Marvel Studios $279.9 million to make.

But does Deadpool’s success mean that Disney will allow Marvel Studios to create an R-rated comic-book film that’s similar in raunchy tone and content to the Ryan Reynolds adaptation? Not at all, with the Los Angeles Times‘ Daniel Miller taking to Twitter to confirm that Bob Iger has confirmed that Marvel has no plans to copy Deadpool.

During a shareholders meeting, one shareholder asked Bob Iger about Deadpool’s huge success, to which the chairman and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company remarked, “We don’t have any plans to make R-rated Marvel movies.”

Marvel Cinematic Universe has been mainly PG-13, with the likes of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Ant-Man, and its subsequent sequels all aimed towards family audiences.

Obviously, that has fared rather well for the studio, as, since Iron Man’s 2008 release, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become synonymous with a new phase of cinema, which has seen Hollywood studios looking to develop and evolve their own huge franchises based on properties with established fan bases.

Marvel’s darkest pieces have actually come courtesy of their Netflix Defenders series, which has seen Daredevil and Jessica Jones released on the streaming website.

However, Bob Iger’s comments might frustrate some Marvel die-hards since the studio recently attained the rights once again to Ghost Rider, Blade, and Punisher, each of which attained cult comic book fans because of their more adult content.

While the Nicolas Cage Ghost Rider films weren’t R-rated, the Wesley Snipe-led Blade trilogy was, and Marvel fans will be hoping to see the vampire hunter return to the big-screen soon in much the same tone and style.

And, who knows, maybe Bob Iger and Marvel Studios will have a change of heart and make Blade R-rated too. The success of Deadpool means that they’d be silly not to now consider it.

Since being released into cinemas on February 12, Deadpool has gone on to become the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. The previous record was held by The Matrix Reloaded, which grossed $621 million. However, currently, Deadpool has grossed over $673.2 million, and over the weekend, it passed $300 million domestically.

But while Bob Iger is insistent that Marvel Studios currently don’t have any plans to make an R-rated film, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. have made steps to try and build upon Deadpool’s success.

It’s already been confirmed that Hugh Jackman’s third Wolverine film, which is due to begin production in the next few weeks, will have an R-rating. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. have also confirmed that Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice will have a director’s cut that’s an R-rating too.

Deadpool was ultimately knocked off the top of the box office after a three-week stint this weekend when Zootopia grossed $73 million. But the superhero film still managed to pull in $16.4 million, and it’s still the highest grossing film of 2016.

[Image via Marvel Studios]

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