Amidst a series of unexpected Fox announcements on Friday afternoon — the two most important being that Alita: Battle Angel’s release is being pushed again, this time to February 14 instead of its December 21 release date, taking the date of Dark Phoenix, which has been moved to June right after its first big media blitz — the studio released a final bit of news. Apparently, they’ve managed to create a PG-13 cut of the raunchy hard-R Deadpool 2 for whatever reason, and they’ve slated it to take over Alita‘s old date. What a world we live in.
Directly before the announcement was made, Ryan Reynolds took to Twitter to post a teaser image that hints at the pop culture riff that may give the new film its structure:
Thoughts? ⚔️ pic.twitter.com/fFe93tDI7e
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) September 28, 2018
Yep, that’s right: It’s apparently a Princess Bride parody, which’ll feature Deadpool reading an adaptation of his life story to the OG himself, Fred Savage, who was last seen getting murdered in Super Troopers 2. Only time will tell if this is the right choice, but it seems like a pretty easy way to make a version of the film that’s either overdubbed or narrated by Reynolds, and we’re sure that there’s a number of ways to incorporate all that b-roll footage they might be sitting on into the final cut.
Some sites have already suggested that this might be a way for Reynolds and company to prove to their new bosses at Disney that they can self-censor and moderate their tone for the more family-friendly nature of the Mouse House, and we see this as a very good guess as to why they’re doing this, but it may not be the right one. Fox is currently sitting on a number of turkeys — remember New Mutants? — and this might be a great way to shore up some extra cash before those films begin to hit theaters. Plus, it’s not like this Deadpool sequel made enough money to justify a re-release, especially in such a crazy time for studio releases.
At least they’re back to the best title for this thing: Untitled Deadpool Movie will hit theaters on December 21, still the most crowded studio release date of the year.
Featured image via 20th Century Fox.