Earlier this year, Bad Boys for Life filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah confirmed that they had met with Marvel Studios to discuss potentially working together down the line. Now, during an interview with Discussing Film, the directors singled out some of the characters they're interested in.
El Arbi: "There’s so much. You know, we love Deadpool."
Fallah: "We love Deadpool!"
El Arbi: "Definitely. I mean there is more of an edge. If there was a Marvel character in the Bad Boys world…"
Fallah: "It would be Deadpool."
El Arbi: "Then Blade is cool too!"
Interestingly, it sounds like something that really draws them to characters like the Merc with the Mouth and Marvel's Daywalker is the fact that their stories can take place in an R-Rated setting.
"Well, if you do something like that it’s a high responsibility as well," El Abri explained, referring to the Blade and Deadpool franchises. "If they say, yeah you’ll do Deadpool. It’s not as if we’re going to just say yeah – we’ll say “Oh sh*t”. But we love these characters. They’re also rated R characters."
Asked if the prospect of bringing an R-Rated story to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was discussed during their meeting with Marvel Studios, the filmmakers played coy, but El Arbi did explain that while an R-Rating might fit a character like Deadpool, it wouldn't work for Spider-Man. "There are stories that are PG and correspond to the world that you don’t need to do an R rating if it doesn’t fit."
We still don't know whether Marvel Studios is willing to bring R-Rated stories to the big screen, but former Disney CEO Bob Iger has previously hinted that it could be a possibility with Deadpool.