After allegedly leaked test footage renewed fan interest, 20th Century Fox has announced Wolverine villain Deadpool will be getting a self-titled spinoff film.
Deadpool will be released Feb. 12, 2016. Although he is not formally attached, Ryan Reynolds is expected to reprise the role he first played in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Created in 1991, Deadpool is a classic Marvel grey-area anti-hero. A physically and emotionally scared mercenary, Wade Wilson undergoes the same experimental Weapon X treatment as Wolverine, thus developing accelerated hearing and an immunity to most drugs. However, because he had cancer at the time, the increased healing also affects Deadpool's tumors, causing the mentally unstable contract killer to become vastly deformed beneath his costume.
Fans know Deadpool as the Marvel Universe's R-rated pseudo-villain -- but never outright hero -- who can't stop cracking jokes to his victims and often breaks the fourth wall to addresses the reader directly. This is often portrayed as something between a narrative device and a manifestation of the character's uncontrollable psychosis -- although some writers like to play with the idea that Deadpool acts insane because he's the only Marvel character aware that he's a fictional creation whose only life is what the reader experiences.
Deadpool was decapitated at the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but the films final shot showed his severed head alive while what was left of his body blindly groped to find it. In the X-Men comics, Deadpool's ability to lose his head is well documented and, like much that define's the character, somewhat of a dark running joke.
In July, test footage filmed around the same time as X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked online, creating renewed interest in the fan favorite.
"The movie has been in a state of limbo for a while," Reynolds told the Niagara Falls Review while working the press circuit for his latest film The Captive.
"There was such an overpowering reaction to the footage, you sort of feel like, 'Oh, so we weren't crazy for our reasons for loving this character, for loving this role. It's interesting to see the power of the internet. It's awe-inspiring, actually. And it's neat that Twitter and Facebook and Instagram can move mountains when used in the right way."