For fans of superhero movies, especially the ones about the X-Men produced by 20th Century Fox for Marvel, nobody could have predicted the breakout popularity of a certain character’s solo film. The so-called “Merc with a Mouth” Deadpool, portrayed in live action by Ryan Reynolds in that movie, became so big from the exposure that a campaign for an Oscar award or two from a few months back actually caught some traction.
With his quirky mannerisms and medium awareness (knowing he’s a fictional character in a fictional world), Deadpool seemed like a prime character to spin off for some wacky visual medium or two.
With video games and movies already under his belt, the next step for the Merc appears to be television, an animated series coming to Fox’s family of channels.
Cartoon Deadpool
Now Deadpool has made appearances in other Marvel TV animation (Spider-Man comes to mind). But this will be his first time headlining a show. Treatment is being developed by Donald and Stephen Glover and is slated to premiere on the Fox digital cable channel FXX. The Glover brothers will serve as writers, executive producers, and showrunners. This is part of a deal that Donald has made with FX Productions to conceptualize the whole slew of new shows.
Glover created the successful TV series “Atlanta,” which has won two Golden Globe Awards in its first (2016) season.
Other executive producers for the “Deadpool” animation include Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb and Jeff Chory.
Already Glover’s spearheading of the yet-untitled series has been highly praised. FX Networks/FX Productions president for original programming Nick Grad believes that Donald’s versatile style will help bring the “Deadpool” series to life with an intense vision.
Also, Jeph Loeb thinks choosing FX to handle the production is a perfect fit for fun.
Marvel and Fox
While Marvel Entertainment originally relied on outside studios like Fox to handle film and TV adaptations of their super characters, the birth of Marvel Studios and their Cinematic Universe of superheroes whose rights remained with the company had caused this partnership to become strained and competitive.
The “Deadpool” animation, in addition to the already-running series “Legion,” appears to be a new step towards renewed cooperation between Marvel and Fox on TV.
There has been no word if Ryan Reynolds, who helped pushed for the “Deadpool” film, will have some involvement in the series. No voice actors have also been confirmed, although one of the stars of Donald Glover’s series “Atlanta,” Zazie Beetz, has been confirmed to be cast as the X-affiliated mercenary Domino in the “Deadpool” movie sequel. Glover himself is in the MCU film “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” showing in July. The “Deadpool” animated series meanwhile, looks to debut on FXX this coming 2018.