Crossovers are exciting, what with all the possibilities of fan-favorite characters sharing the screen, so it’s easy to get caught up in media buzz about potential marriages between major franchises. Heck, Men In Black is set to cross over with the 21 Jump Street series, so it might seem that anything is possible. It seems, however, that ideas of future team-ups most often come from the multiple Marvel properties scattered across the different studios of Fox, Sony, and Disney’s Marvel Studios. Despite a slew of blockbusters from all three production houses, Marvel Studios continues to hold the most legitimacy with fans, both due to Disney’s ownership of the source-material comics as well as consistency in quality across their connective film universe. As Spider-Man is set to swing back into Marvel’s grasp in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War, the general attitude seems to be one of celebration as Marvel’s favorite son is set to return home under the company’s umbrella. While this move maintains Sony’s distribution control over future Spider-Man films, the move has prompted continued and widespread speculation that Spider-Man and other Marvel characters could have potential to now crossover with X-Men characters held by Fox.
Potential for one such crossover, between the foul-mouthed X-Men character of Deadpool and the freshly rebooted MCU Spider-Man, came this last week following comments by X-Men producer and writer Simon Kinberg. Deapool director Tim Miller is reportedly “trying to build bridges” with producers over at Marvel Studios, and Kinberg (who has a solid relationship with Disney through his work on different Star Wars properties) has cited his “great love and respect” for Marvel head Kevin Feige as a starting point for conversations about Deadpool sharing the screen with Spider-Man.
Speculation based on these and similar comments is all well and good, especially considering the chummy relationship Spider-Man and Deadpool enjoy in both their comics and animated television shows. However, a blending of their cinematic properties seems highly unlikely due to one simple dynamic: ratings. Deadpool is an R-rated movie. Deadpool is an R-rated movie for many, many, many reasons, and those reasons are often pointed to as aspects that allowed the film to stand apart and above the suffocating conglomerate of other superhero and comic book movies currently dominating the box-office. While it’s thoroughly inaccurate to assume that the movie is good simply because it is rated R, Deadpool is still the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time., which shows that it has a pretty solid audience with rather adult tastes.
The upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming, on the other hand, is set to star the youngest on-screen Spider-Man yet. Described as a “coming of age story” by Marvel Studio execs, the simple setting of the film will be drastically different from the nudity and profanity-laced venues of Deadpool. In fact, Peter Parker will not even be old enough to have seen Deadpool in theaters without an accompanying adult. According to director Jon Watts, “we’re really going to see Peter in high school and get deeper into that side of it. He’s just 15 now.” Tack onto all of this that Disney chief Bob Iger has declared that Disney doesn’t “have any plans to make an R-rated Marvel movie” and the possibility of a collaborative effort on a future Deadpool/Spider-Man film seems slim. This is not to say that any such effort is impossible. There’s plenty of room for growth or change if both series continue to produce films for the foreseeable future, but any crossover would have to feature very different versions of the current characters and probably wouldn’t be in the production pipeline for several years to come.
On a side-note, similar arguments could be made as to why the Netflix corner of the MCU will also remain separate from the Disney-owned heroes who battle across the silver screen, even if Charlie Cox really wants it to happen.
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