‘Once Upon A Deadpool’ Secures China Date In Mouthy Merc’s First Middle Kingdom Move

In a first for Deadpool, the Merc with the Mouth has been granted a China release. Fox’s sequel, Deadpool 2, in its PG-13 version Once Upon A Deadpool, has been slated for January 25 in the Middle Kingdom where the original 2016 movie and its 2018 follow-up were too raunchy and racy for the market.

The iteration that’s headed to China in 10 days’ time is the mutated take on DP2 that includes a framing device featuring franchise star Ryan Reynolds and The Princess Bride‘s Fred Savage.

While the release will come just 10 days ahead of the start of the Chinese New Year influx of local pics, it’s thought there is pent-up demand for a Deadpool movie in the superhero-loving market — DP2 has a 7.5 on Douban. Given the nature of Deadpool, and the tweaked version, this remains somewhat uncharted territory in terms of comps. The last X-Men movie to release in China was 2017’s Logan, which had some cuts and ultimately grossed a tidy $106.2 million there.

Before that, X-Men: Apocalypse took $121M in the market in 2016; X-Men: Days of Future Past did $116.5M in 2014. First Class, in 2011, had been rejected because of the Cold War conflict depicted.

The David Leitch-directed Deadpool 2 was originally released domestically and overseas in May 2018, logging a new benchmark for Fox International. Combined with the late-year softer version, it has grossed $744M worldwide ($419M from overseas). Once Upon A Deadpool has, within that, grossed $9.37M globally, including $3.3M from international. Russia and Australia are the most significant markets for the latter version, but China should outstrip those with the January 25 release.