by: S. Scott Stanikmas – Senior Staff Writer

So early word of mouth is that Deadpool is awesome…and having seen it myself I can confirm that if you are a fan of the Merc With A Mouth you are in for one wild and fun ride.

I can honestly say that a film like this screams “franchise.” I know that FOX is looking more towards Channing Tatum and the upcoming Gambit movie to fill the void once Hugh Jackman retires from playing Wolverine but Deadpool is the kind of character that a studio can build films around.

The Hollywood Reporter believes so too, as they have the good word that FOX is already looking to get a sequel to Deadpool up and running. Word is that writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have already been brought back to pen the further adventures of Wade Wilson. No word yet on if director Tim Miller has been asked back into the fold, but if the film does well enough at the box office it should be a no-brainer.

Producer Simon Kinberg already confirmed talks of this a few months back:

We certainly are talking about the sequel—we were talking about the sequel while we were making the movie just because when you make a film like this that’s from a serialized source material, you hope that it’s the first of many… But yeah [Fox is] feeling good about it, we’re all feeling really proud of it, so hopefully before it comes out we will be well into the process of figuring out a sequel.

But a sequel isn’t all that’s in the works. What about a good old-fashioned team film? ‘Pool was part of a group known as X-Force and FOX has been trying to get a film of Marvel’s grittier mutants off the ground for some time now. Not to keep beating a dead horse but if the Deadpool movie does well enough this could lead to the team that introduced us to one of the most popular mutants of the 90s getting a spin-off team flick.

Ryan Reynolds has even said that this would be the route he’d like to go (in talking with FILMSTARTS via Collider):

There’s so much material to mine in just the X-Men universe … In the future, if we’re doing a bunch more Deadpool movies, we’re really going to explore the X-Men a lot. We’ll see. And maybe X-Force — X-Force is my priority. I really want to get that in.

I say forget Gambit. Let’s put all our hopes on the mercenary in red-and-black and maybe we’ll be lucky enough for a couple more funny, crude, obnoxious, heartfelt non-superhero movies like Deadpool.