Deadpool

A tragic death in the movie world gives us pause in today's Pop Bits.

Isn’t it just like Ryan Reynolds to upstage a colleague? After listening to critics sing the praises of Logan for the past few weeks, fans around the country took their seats on Friday night ready to watch Hugh Jackman strap on his metal claws one last time. And so it came as quite a surprise when the first superhero to appear onscreen wasn’t Wolverine but Deadpool, everyone’s favorite violent and profane superhero — and, if we’re being honest with each other, the entire reason an R-rated Wolverine movie was greenlit by 20th Century Fox.

Early on, you might’ve expected Hugh Jackman’s final bow as Wolverine to go out with a bang, like a giant farewell party where all his old and new friends are there to wave him off into the sunset. But that wouldn’t be quite fitting for a loner like Logan (and it sounds more like an X-Men movie), whose upcoming sequel really emphasizes the “solo” in solo outing — so don’t go in expecting to see a bunch of cameos from other mutants in the X-universe.

La La Land, duh. Manchester By the Sea, right. Moonlight, you better. Deadpool – excuse me? It’s true, Ryan Reynolds’ superhero movie has just been named one of the 10 best films of 2016 by the Producers Guild of America (via Variety). Many of us thought its Golden Globes nominations were just a result of the HFPA’s always wacky taste, but it seems the Deadpool virus has spread across the nation to multiple voting bodies, from the Writer’s Guild of America to the Producers.

Deadpool. Mercenary. Superhero. Weapon X survivor. And Writer’s Guild of America nominee for Best Adapted freaking Screenplay.

When is a superhero movie like Game of Thrones? When it’s the most pirated movie of the year, of course. On a new list of all the movies downloaded from popular torrenting site BitTorrent, the merc with a mouth tops the chart over Batman v. Superman, Captain America: Civil War, and The Force Awakens.

If you went to the movies a lot in 2016, you likely saw one of these five movies, because they made more money in the U.S. than the rest.

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.

While Marvel and Sony are now playing in the same superhero sandbox, Marvel and Fox’s relationship remains a little less…cooperative. But there may be hope yet for an eventual collaboration of some kind, as the writers behind Deadpool have revealed that the two studios worked together to swap characters for their respective cinematic universes. You shouldn’t get your hopes up for the X-Men to appear in an Avengers film anytime soon, but it’s definitely optimistic news for Marvel fans.

X-Men: Apocalypse opened in the United States in May; after five weeks in theaters it’s starting to wind down its domestic theatrical run. (Last weekend it grossed an estimated $2.4 million on about 1600 screens.) But while the movie is slowly vanishing from theaters here, it’s yet to even open in certain international markets, including Japan. Over there, Apocalypse doesn’t debut until August, so the film’s promotional campaign continues in full force on that side of the Pacific. That includes this latest trailer, in which the star of Fox’s other (and far more financially successful) 2016 superhero movie shows up to promote his more famous colleagues.