20th Century Fox

In the superhero movie business, ratings have until now seemed like a pretty simple business. The way to get the biggest audience while also keeping in as much fantasy violence and perilous situations to stay true to the comics was to shoot for the middle ground, a nice, nonthreatening PG-13. No full-on nudity, no blood splatter, and relegate your one allocated f-word to Wolverine. But the times, they are a-changin’, and superhero movies are changing right along with them, starting with shooting for the more mature, edgier R-rating. As it turns out, this is exactly the direction audiences want them to go.

One of the stranger stories to end the year was the sudden departure of director Tim Miller from Deadpool 2, the sequel to 2016’s biggest breakout hit. Given the original film’s agonizing production history, it seemed like shooting a sequel would be a walk in the woods; instead, Miller’s decision to walk away from the project caught everyone by surprise, and rumors have swirled about creative differences ever since. Thankfully, Miller himself recently spoke at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects (via iO9) and put some of these rumors to bed.

Future advertising executives of the world, take notice: the official Instagram account for 20th Century Fox’s upcoming Logan is how you build up to the release of a movie. For the past few months, Logan has released a series of black and white photos that tease fragments of the new mutant-free world inhabited by Wolverine and Charles Xavier. Rather than simply share images found in the final movie, the Instagram account has put together a collection of photos meant to keep their social media audience engaged leading up to the film’s release. The photos serve as a kind of art installation for dedicated fans of the X-Men franchise.

A few weeks ago, Deadpool director Tim Miller shocked the world  —  or a nerdier and more profane subsection of the world, anyways — by walking away from Deadpool 2. As reporters scrambled to make sense of why Miller would leave one of the breakout franchises of 2016, reports emerged that Miller and star Ryan Reynolds had very conflicting ideas for the upcoming sequel and that 20th Century Fox had thrown their support behind Reynolds’ vision for the franchise. Deadpool 2 was officially in the hands of Ryan Reynolds now, but the film still needed a director, and the hunt was on.

This hasn’t been a great month for Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool 2. Between the departure of director Tim Miller and the loss of composer Junkie XL, the sequel to the breakout superhero hit has been losing momentum at a time where it should be locking in the moving parts for the next iteration of the film. That still hasn’t stopped 20th Century Fox from pushing forward with the sequel, which apparently will begin shooting as early as January 2017, production problems be darned.

One of the biggest Hollywood success stories of the past few years was Deadpool, the R-rated superhero movie from 20th Century Fox. From dead in the water to surprise box office smash, Deadpool became a perfect parable for young filmmakers who have a story to tell and won’t let failure stand in the way of getting their movie made. Unfortunately, though, life doesn’t always adhere to clean narratives. Despite all the setbacks that Deadpool director Tim Miller faced along the way, it turns out there was only one thing that could cause him to throw in the towel: success.

While reviews for Captain America: Civil War were not quite as unanimous as past entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there was one thing we could all agree on: Sony Pictures was very, very smart to let Marvel take a crack at shaping the next series of Spider-Man movies.

We've been updating our Supermovies infographic a lot this week, with the news that Valiant is teaming with Sony to make Bloodshot and Harbinger movies, the announcement of a date for the Lego Batman Movie, and the revelation that The Lego Movie directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller are working on an animated Spider-Man movie set in the same continuity as Sony's next Spidey reboot. With that last announcement, something happened that we've never seen before on the timeline; we got a month where every weekend sees the release of a new superhero movie.

For a long time it seemed like the Deadpool movie could never happen. The character's first appearance in X-Men Origins: Wolverine completely mis-read Deadpool's appeal despite the seemingly perfect casing of Ryan Reynolds. When Reynolds made his DC with the Green Lantern movie for Warner Bros., it seemed unlikely that Deadpool would ever get back in track. The canny decision to leak some test footage back in July of last year for a Deadpool movie treatment that relies heavily on CGI to embrace the character's Looney Tunes cartoonishness caused enough of a stir that Deadpool was suddenly alive again, with Reynolds still attached to star. Now we have evidence from the cast that the movie has entered into production, which means it is really, actually happening.

20th Century Fox's movie reboot of the Fantastic Four doesn't seem to have generated much buzz among comic fans, perhaps because all we hear about the movie is the ways in which it diverges from the comics created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The cast is young; the space mission origin story has apparently changed; and Doctor Doom is rumored to be an angry blogger named Domashev rather than a foreign despot. We seem to know a lot about what the movie won't be; now it's time for Fox to tell us what the movie will be.