(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sat 22 November 2025 3:30, UK
Remember a time before Ryan Reynolds was everywhere? Me neither.
From rom-com star to failed superhero to successful superhero to the football-club owning, Blake Lively-marrying, Abu Dhabi-shilling mainstay he is today, it’s been a wild ride. Given his innate business sense and his chronic inability to stay out of the spotlight, he’s probably not going anywhere any time soon.
In 2024, ‘Double-R’ took the next step in his plan for world domination. Despite having played Marvel’s Deadpool for the better part of a decade, he formally joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with Deadpool & Wolverine, a film made possible when Disney absorbed 20th Century Fox into its gelatinous, all-encompassing media superblob.
The movie, which coaxed Hugh Jackman out of his super-retirement, was a huge success. It grossed well over a billion dollars worldwide, making it the MCU’s seventh-highest-grossing entry overall. This might seem like a no-brainer in hindsight, but it was far from a guarantee.
Deadpool & Wolverine was the first R-rated MCU movie. The two Fox-owned ‘Deadpool’ movies had been given this rating, but Disney preferred to keep their superhero output a bit more family-friendly. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 had gotten away with one ‘F-bomb’ the year before, but there had never been a Marvel movie on this scale before. The public ate it up, though, which might have given Reynolds his next big idea.
Speaking on The Box Office Podcast, the dishy Canadian revealed that he had used his newfound connections to try and give another property an adult-oriented makeover. “I pitched to Disney, I said, ‘Why don’t we do an R-rated ‘Star Wars’ property?’” he recalled. “‘It doesn’t have to be overt, A+ characters. There’s a wide range of characters you could use.’ And I don’t mean R-rated to be vulgar. R-rated as a Trojan horse for emotion. I always wonder why studios don’t want to just gamble on something like that.”
Unfortunately, the idea was shot down like a TIE fighter over the Death Star, with the actor proclaiming “that would be a bad fit.”
While Marvel has dipped its toes into slightly steamier water over the past few years, its stablemate has been much more reluctant. ‘Star Wars’ only got its first swear in the third episode of Andor, in which a character, Linus Mosk, says “shit”. At the time of writing, there have been precisely zero F-words in the galaxy far, far away.
On paper, you can see why ‘The House of Mouse’ would be so hesitant to let Reynolds and his filthy mouth have a go at ‘Star Wars’. It’s gone to some fairly dark places in its time, but the franchise’s success lies in its universal appeal. The kids who watched the original trilogy in the 1970s and 1980s showed the movies to their kids, who then went with their kids to watch the prequels, and so on and so forth. Then there’s all the merchandising and endorsement deals. It would be significantly harder to offer a tie-in Happy Meal toy for a film full of effs and jeffs.
While Disney might have turned down Reynolds, they might not have given up on the idea of R-rated ‘Star Wars’. The upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter is being directed by JJ Levy, who also made – you guessed it – Deadpool & Wolverine. Maybe we will get to see C-3PO finally cuss out R2-D2 after all.
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