The Merc with a Mouth is coming again – and this time he’s bringing a friend, the time-travelling soldier Cable. Here’s everything we know about Deadpool 2 so far, including all the trailers and posters.
After years of tortured development, the first Deadpool movie burst into cinemas as something totally unique: an R-rated superhero flick that was irreverent, offensive, and entirely self-aware. Then it made giant, heaping, unbelievable piles of money, and so here we are, staring down the barrel of Deadpool 2.
Like all sequels, it promises to be bigger, better, and crasser (wait, maybe that last one isn’t quite so universal) than the first film, and will also feature one major new addition: Josh Brolin’s time-travelling soldier Cable, Deadpool’s long-suffering frenemy in the comics. Here’s everything we know about Deadpool 2 so far.
Deadpool 2 is out in the UK and a few other European countries first, on 16 May 2018, before rolling out to the US just two days later on 18 May 2018. Tickets aren’t on sale yet, but US fans should keep an eye on Fandango for the first pre-sale announcements.
Since the first film made close to $1 billion worldwide, expect the sequel to be even bigger – though with the likes of Avengers: Infinity War and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom also coming out in 2018, it’s unlikely to top the box office charts for the year.
Weirdly enough, the IMDB page for the film still lists it as ‘Untitled Deadpool Sequel’, as does 20th Century Fox’s YouTube playlist for the film – we don’t know right now if that’s because Fox hasn’t yet picked a name, or if it really is going with that for the title – we wouldn’t put it past them.
Unsurprisingly, Ryan Reynolds is returning for his lead role as Deadpool himself, a.k.a. Wade Wilson. He’ll be joined by a load of other familiar faces: Morena Baccarin as Vanessa; T. J. Miller as tech guru Weasel; Brianna Hildebrand as the brilliantly named Negasonic Teenage Warhead; Stefan Kapicic as Colossus; and even Karan Soni as the taxi driver Dopinder.
There are a few new faces too though. The big one is Josh Brolin, who’ll be fresh out of his first proper appearance as Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War when he rocks up here as Cable, a time-travelling soldier from the future with a metal arm and a soft spot for comically large guns. Comics fans will recognise the legendary Cable/Deadpool pairing, with the brusque Cable rarely putting up with Deadpool’s nonsense for long.
He’s not the only new face though. Zazie Beetz is joining as Domino, a mutant assassin with the power to alter probabilities in her favour, while the potty-mouthed Julian Dennison (from the brilliant Hunt for the Wilderpeople) will be making his Hollywood debut. There’s also some sort of appearance from Terry Crews, in an as-yet unnamed role.
Behind the scenes, the script once again comes from Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who jointly wrote the first film, but there’s been a bit of a shift in the director’s chair. Original director Tim Miller left the project amid rumours of budget squabbles, but was quickly replaced by David Leitch – no bad thing, as he co-directed John Wick and was in charge of last year’s Atomic Blonde, proving he’s more than capable of handling Deadpool’s frenetic action.
Unsurprisingly, given the marketing campaign for the first film, there have been loads of stills and posters for Deadpool 2 so far. First up, there was this brilliant illustrated poster for Thanksgiving 2017:
That’s not the only hand-drawn image for the film – there’s also this charming depiction of Deadpool and Cable dubbed ‘The Second Coming’:
The most recent proper poster came alongside the first full trailer, and sees Deadpool going full Flashdance on us:
Outside of the actual posters, the film’s producers have also given us great looks at the two biggest new characters in some official photos. First up, here’s our best look yet at Cable (aside from the trailer):
And here’s Zazie Beetz as Domino, cribbing a pose from Deadpool himself:
The Deadpool 2 marketing campaign kicked off in earnest way back in March 2017 – more than a year ahead of the film’s release, with a short film titled ‘No Good Deed’ that served as part Deadpool 2 teaser, and part promo effort for the release of the Wolverine solo film Logan.
After that, there was a gap of a good few months before we got our first actual footage from the film: a very brief montage at the end of another surreal teaser parodying the painter Bob Ross.
Our next footage was, once again, nothing from the film at all: instead it was a silly clip from Reynolds to promote a tattoo stunt at the Brazil Comic-Con.
The next closest thing to an actual trailer for the movie arrived in February, though even this couldn’t resist pausing halfway through for a diversion. Still, at least we got our first proper look at Cable in action, even if there are virtually no plot hints at all.
Finally, after all that, in March 2018 the Deadpool 2 publicity team unveiled an actual, honest-to-god trailer. A proper one. It even says ‘trailer’ in the YouTube title and everything.
That’s just about everything we have on the film so far, but check back here for updates as we find out more.
