But writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick reckon we ought to have faith that the Merc with a Mouth will make it to the big screen - and in spectacular fashion.
"We have a phenomenal director in Tim Miller, who did about a three minute test for Fox, and Ryan came in to do the mo-cap for it and the voice," Reese explained in an interview with Collider. "And it’s like the greatest three minutes ever. I look at the three minutes and I’m like, 'That’s the movie, and it has to get made.' I think the biggest hurdle right now is convincing the-powers-that-be that it’s okay to have a hard-R rated movie within the Marvel Universe."
Speaking about how this movie might fit in with the Marvel universe, Reese added: "I think there just has to be a tolerance for the outlier. There has to be a tolerance for this one project that’s not like all the other Marvel projects."
Mr Reynolds himself echoed that sentiment in a recent chat with Empire, saying: "I love Deadpool and there is a script that's in development. But it's so, so far into the R-rated zone... it's a nearly NC-17 world and I just don't know if the studio would ever risk their reputation doing it. We've been developing it and we would never wanna do it unless you could it that R-rated way, so…"
The actor went on to reveal that the movie has a similar tone to Reese and Wernick's previous project, Zombieland: "They wrote it and they developed it as well and, you know, it's sitting there. You could do it for a pittance compared to the modern sort of epic scale superhero movies, but it's about a guy who knows he's in a movie and knows he's in a comic book who is deeply mentally disturbed and hyper violent. And that's tough to get by a studio."
And as for how he thinks the movie would tie-in to the Marvelverse: "I don't think you can do that, because that character would really sully that whole world. The script is one rewrite away from Deadpool jumping across the desk at the studio executive and attacking him.
"But I've always wanted to do the movie if only because Deadpool would get to do his own movie trailer. So that's a thing that we were dying to do and we would love to be a part of that. I don't know how it would fit though, no. In the current iteration of the script, it doesn't address Wolverine - though it does address Deadpool's appearance in Wolverine. Deadpool was not happy with Deadpool in Wolverine. He has a sort of a WTF!? moment with that."
Speaking, meanwhile, of his ties to DC as Hal Jordan, the actor was somewhat negative about the prospect of signing up to co-star in Warner Bros. planned Justice League movie.
"I don't know. If you're gonna do comic book movies in that vein, you really have to get them right. I believe that Joss Whedon is the guy that just nails it and Christopher Nolan obviously nails it. So if they were gonna do it like that, it would be an interesting thing to do," he said.
"It's just that... working on Green Lantern, I saw how difficult it is make that concept palatable, and how confused it all can be when you don't really know exactly where you're going with it or you don't really know how to access that world properly - that world comic book fans have been accessing for decades and falling in love with. So at this point I have very little interest in joining that kind of world. But, you know, a great script and a good director can always turn that around."
Uh-huh. We'll see what happens, eh Ryan?
