When Deadpool was released to critical acclaim and feverish support at the box office, it proved many things. It proved that a comic book movie didn’t need to be dark and gritty, that it could be light and fun. It showed that executives didn’t need to fear deviating from straying from the tried and true path of past success. It also showed that a movie with a hard-R rating could find a wide audience. But how different of a film would Deadpool have been if it had been toned down? According to one of the film’s writers, not all that much.
Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick recently sat down for a post screening Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith for his podcast The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith. One of the questions pertained to the question of a PG-13 Deadpool, and what that would look like. Reese went on to explain:
“Interestingly, it wasn’t as hard as you’d think. You take some of the swear words, you take out some of the sex, the violence is all in how it’s shot, so it wasn’t as soul crushing as you’d think. But it lost its teeth a little bit.”
Many people attribute Deadpool’s success to the aforementioned “teeth”. While it’s not hard to imaging a PG-13 rendition of Deadpool, it is hard to imagine that it would have created such a buzz around itself. With a PG-13 rating, it could have felt a little too similar to other super hero films, and the R rating definitely let the marketing team have some fun with how it was advertised, and it certainly payed off. Deadpool has become one of the most financially successful rated-R films of all time, and it’s only been out for two weeks.
An untitled sequel to Deadpool is currently in the works.