Disney currently has a ban in their movies which includes smoking and it also applies to the Marvel movies, so it is safe to say when Wolverine makes his way to the MCU, the same will apply to the character who is known for sportin’ a stogie or two. The Disney purchase of Fox Studios is set to go through within the next couple of months, which includes the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters.
Speaking with THR, Disney film chief Alan Horn offers that Disney would have never made movies that Fox Studios released, such as Bohemian Rhapsody, or Warner Bros.’ Argo, because of smoking and swearing.
With Fox, we can make movies that right now I say no to. Take Bohemian Rhapsody, which is PG-13. It’s a hit movie and very, very good. But there’s no way we could make it under the Disney label because the characters smoke cigarettes and other content. Nor could we have made [Warner Bros.’ R-rated] Oscar-winning Argo because the characters smoke and use the F-word. We always have to think about the smoking policy. The audience for a Disney movie may not know what they are going to see, but they know what they aren’t going to see. There are certain things we just can’t include because we’ll get letters.
With Horn mentioning smoking and using the F-word, the question of Deadpool coming to Disney might be brought up. While Horn didn’t touch upon it, Disney CEO Bob Iger recently hinted Disney will be creating a separate brand for Deadpool and potential other R-rated content that identifies it as being separate from Disney or classic Marvel content.
“We do believe there is room for the Fox properties to exist without significant Disney influence over the nature of the content. Meaning that we see that there is certainly popularity amongst Marvel fans for the R-rated Deadpool films, for instance, we are going to continue in that business, and there might be room for more of that,” Iger said during an investors conference call. “There is nothing that we really seen in the Fox library or in the activities that Fox is engaging in today from a standards perspective that would be a concern for us as long as we are very carefully branding them and making sure we are not in any way confusing the consumer with product that would be the Disney product or more traditional Marvel product.”
So perhaps if Disney does create a separate R-rated brand, that could mean the ban would be lifted for smoking and swearing, so hopefully, we get to see Wolverine like he is in the classic comics and not some diluted character. It could be possible that characters like Deadpool and Wolverine could be R-rated in the separate Disney brand, but PG-13 within the MCU films.
