Posted in: FX, streaming, TV | Tagged: deadpool, donald glover, fx, FXX, Marvel Studios, mcu

Deadpool: When Donald Glover, FX Tried Animating The Merc with a Mouth

With Deadpool & Wolverine hitting soon, we look back to when FX, Donald Glover, and Stephen Glover tried to animate "The Merc with a Mouth."

Based on what we're seeing on social media and from early box office estimates, Marvel Studios' Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman-starring Deadpool & Wolverine looks to be ready to deliver a multiversal boost to the theater business at a time when theater owners (and Marvel Studios' MCU) could use a couple of big hits in a row. Of course, that got us thinking back to a story we covered back in 2018 – though after a global pandemic and a pair of major entertainment industry labor strikes, it feels like it was a hundred years ago. Based on the success of Legion, Marvel Television and FX Productions announced in 2017 that a 10-episode animated series spotlighting "The Merc with a Mouth" would be hitting screens, with Donald Glover and Stephen Glover (FX's Atlanta) already writing the series. Sounds great, right? In fact, reports were that some early animation had been completed on the series – one that the Glovers wanted to have a distinct voice and tone from previous incarnations of the character – including the "Deadpool" films.

But in March 2018, the bottom would fall out on the project – with FX not moving forward with the adult animated action-comedy series, leaving a whole lot of fans scratching their heads over what was thought to be a no-brainer. During a time when X-Men '97 is still being praised, it's hard to imagine now how an animated opportunity like this would get passed on. Reports at the time were that Marvel wasn't on the same page as the Glovers regarding the show's vision based on scripts submitted but that FX backed the brothers' vision.

Shortly after the news hit, Glover would take to Twitter (yup, it was still called that back in those pre-Elon Musk days) to push back on rumblings that his creative schedule was a major factor in the series not moving forward. "For the record, I wasn't too busy to work on Deadpool," Glover wrote as part of what would become a series of very interesting (and since deleted tweets), with Glover sharing pages of a Deadpool script that mocked the series' cancellation. In fact, Glover's tweets made headlines with The New York Times, CNN, and other media outlets – with screencaps of the first three pages below (and the rest available as screencaps in our original reporting):

During the 2018 Television Critics Association (TCA) press event, FX CEO John Landgraf had the opportunity to address the matter in detail during an interview with Variety – and he made sure it was understood that the decision to pull the plug was not made by FX. "They didn't want to do the show that Donald and Stephen [Glover] wrote. We would have done the show that Donald and Stephen wrote, but it wasn't our decision," Landgraf shared. "When Marvel decided not to do that show, we parted company with them as did Donald and Stephen. Now it's totally up to them [Marvel] whether they hire someone else to do a different show."

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