‘Deadpool 3’ Reportedly Not Making Its May 2024 Release
It was a long time coming, but it took someone to actually say it. Deadline reported on Thursday that the upcoming Deadpool 3 will be moving away from its planned May 3, 2024, release date, due to the actors’ strike prohibiting production from continuing.
The labor stoppage, which paralyzed production back in mid-July in London, has no end in sight, as the studios ended talks with the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee last week, a move that has been met with a lot of eye-rolls from members of the guild. And since there are no prospects for talks to restart, it’s possible the Marvel Studios production, along with any other studio-backed project, may not be able to roll cameras again until top of the year.
As mentioned earlier, this was a long time coming. By the time the SAG-AFTRA strike was announced, they had managed to film half of the movie, as confirmed by director Shawn Levy in a recent interview. Levy also said he’s now edited the footage available, and we assume it’s been distributed to VFX houses all over the world. But there’s another half still left on the page, and if they can’t manage to end the strike before Thanksgiving, it will probably be impossible for them. Because of that, Marvel may have opted to push it back indefinitely. It should be noted that the studio has not yet publicly confirmed it, this is coming from Deadline‘s background sources.
The question now becomes: What next? Deadpool 3 was moved up a few months, from November 2024 to May 3, 2024, earlier this year amid a whole reshuffling of Disney’s schedule post-WGA strike. The early-summer date was previously held by Captain America: Brave New World, which is currently set for July 26, 2024. Deadline is hearing that there is a slim chance they may revert back to the original plan, helped by the fact that Julius Onah’s film completed production without issues and has been in post for months. At the same time, there must be a reason why they delayed it in the first place — perhaps they didn’t think they’d be able to finish the VFX in time for May, and the last thing Marvel needs right now is another rushed film.
Deadpool 3 could also move back to its original September 2024 date, or its later November 2024 date, although there’s also December’s Thunderbolts to consider here (because that project was unable to start filming before the strikes, it’s likely to be pushed back as well). It’s possible that the studio is waiting to see how The Marvels performs. If the reaction is poor and the box office interest isn’t there, they may opt to delay Deadpool 3 until the end of the year, and leave Brave New World in July, giving audiences nearly nine months between theatrical films so they can start craving for them again. But if The Marvels performs well, they might try to squeeze the Anthony Mackie-led film into May and have Deadpool 3 open in September, which seems reasonable enough schedule-wise. At the same time, Thunderbolts will, at the very least, move into February 2025, pushing Blade off another few months, especially as that script is nowhere near ready.
Deadline also notes that more of these moves will come in the next few months, as studios reassess their 2024 schedule in light of the strikes and the productions they weren’t able to complete before the summer. But this will also affect the 2025 calendar. Think of Superman: Legacy, for instance, which was set to start filming in January 2025. Even if the strikes are over by then, James Gunn and his team had no time to cast the film, an essential step for pre-production. David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan have also not done any training or rehearsals, so we’re probably looking at a spring shoot at the very earliest. The same goes for other major productions including Fantastic Four, Star Wars, and more.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
