Back in January, Bad Boys for Life directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah revealed to Comic Book that they had some early talks with Marvel Studios.
EL ARBI: “Well there’s nothing concrete. They just met us. The said they liked the movie and they just told us, ‘Yo, what do you wanna do? Let’s find something to work together on.’ So there’s nothing really planned yet, it was just like a meeting. But yeah, we’ll see if we find something cool.”
While speaking with Discussing Film they’ve now revealed they would be interested in tackling characters like Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Mahershala Ali’s Blade. However, the pair of directors aren’t saying those are the specific characters they spoke with Marvel about.
EL ARBI: “There’s so much. You know, we love Deadpool.”
FALLAH: “We love Deadpool!”
EL ARBI: “Definitely. I mean there is more of an edge. If there was a Marvel character in the Bad Boys world…”
FALLAH: “It would be Deadpool.”
EL ARBI: “Then Blade is cool too!”
When asked if this was their open campaign to direct those projects they responded with the following.
EL ARBI: “Well, if you do something like that it’s a high responsibility as well. If they say, yeah you’ll do Deadpool. It’s not as if we’re going to just say yeah – we’ll say ‘Oh shit’. But we love these characters. They’re also rated-R characters.”
Eric Brooks aka Blade is a vampire hunter and in the comics was originally from London, England but got a complete makeover from David S. Goyer, Wesley Snipes, and director Stephen Norrington with the 1998 film that led to two sequels and short-lived television series.
We currently don’t know the development status of the Blade reboot outside of the casting of Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali when it was announced last July at San Diego Comic-Con and an in-house draft sitting on a shelf at Marvel since at least 2013. There haven’t been any announcements concerning screenwriters, directors, or even a release date.
Wade Wilson aka Deadpool is a foul-mouthed mutant mercenary played by Ryan Reynolds. Deadpool has had two feature films and is one of the only Fox’/Marvel characters to make the jump to Marvel Studios post-merger.
Deadpool 3 seemingly is much further along as Ryan Reynolds with screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese seemingly have already talked with Marvel last year post-merger. Ryan revealing back in December that the project is now in active development at Marvel Studios and has teased on Instagram of a possible Phase Five release.
How Marvel plans on introducing either the X-Men or Deadpool remains to be seen.
We don’t know if the directing duo will ultimately land a Marvel project since Sony Pictures is eager to move forward with Bad Boys 4 after the box office success of Bad Boys for Life.
Do you think they should direct Blade or Deadpool 3?
