The Deadpool Effect is now officially a thing. As many predicted and suspected following Deadpool’s surprising success at the box office this past weekend, movie studios would try to capitalize on the success of that film by making their superhero movies R-rated (ignoring the fact that that was just a very small part of why Deadpool was successful). Just this morning we brought you the news that the X-Force movie could be rated R and now comes word that Hugh Jackman’s still untitled final Wolverine movie (Wolverine 3? The Wolverine 2?) is being planned as an R-rated film.

The news comes from this past weekend’s Toy Fair in New York City, where Fox reportedly had brochures on hand for all their upcoming franchises. There among them was the Wolverine movie and this intriguing note: “Anticipated Rating: R”.

Uhhh, ok sure. While it seems weird at this point in Wolverine’s cinematic career to pivot to an R-rated film, it’s not like it doesn’t fit the character. His best moments over the many X-Men films have been moments like the “go f–- yourself” from X-Men: First Class and the raid on X-mansion from X2, which had Wolverine killing a whole bunch of mercenaries. Yes, it’s a bit reactionary to make the change now, but Hugh Jackman has been talking about the potential of an R-rating for a Wolverine movie since 2011, telling MTV at the time:

There’s such great temptation to make an R-rated ’Wolverine.’ I’ve always felt that, and I know a lot of fans would like that. If there’s ever going to be a superhero that is going to be R-rated, it’s going to be Wolverine.

WRONG. Ya got beat to the punch, Jackman, but better late than never, I guess.

There’s a placeholder graphic in that Toy Fair image with three claw marks (get it, because it’s the third Wolverine movie?), but the title is listed as The Wolverine, which can’t be true, because that was the title of the last Wolverine movie, so we still don’t know what this movie will be called. But, we do know that Patrick Stewart will be back as Professor X and director James Mangold is reportedly drawing inspiration from the “Old Man Logan” comic book series.

Jackman recently said, as he was out promoting Eddie the Eagle, that there is not a concrete start date yet for this Wolverine movie, but that he was training for the film and growing out the facial hair, so he anticipated it being rather soon. Whenever it is, it has to be soon if Fox wants to keep the planned March 2017 release date they’ve already set for the film.

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