Don’t ever tell Donald Glover he’s “too busy” to make a kick-arse Deadpool animated series.
From left to right: Dapper Donald Glover and Deadpool. Photo: Dia Dipasupil (Getty Images), Image: Patrick Zircher, Udon’s M3th, and Gotham (Marvel)
for the record: i wasnt too busy to work on deadpool.
— donald (@donaldglover) March 28, 2018
On the heels of the announcement that he and FX had exited Marvel’s animated Deadpool project, Glover’s casually tossed us out a gander at what his adult-focused animated action comedy could’ve been like. Suffice to say, let’s hope another network makes this happen.
Over the weekend, FX released a statement announcing they would no longer be involved with making a Deadpool animated series, which would have been the network’s second Marvel series after Noah Hawley’s live-action series Legion. The show was set to be run by Glover and his brother, Stephen Glover, and had already been picked up for a 10-episode season to run on FXX. We, and a lot of others, were very excited.
While it wasn’t cited in the initial reports of the parting of ways, it seems as though someone along the way must’ve claimed that Glover was “too busy” to make the series happen, which he did not care for. Now, to be fair, he is a very busy man. He’s the creator of the award-winning FX series Atlanta, has a successful music career as Childish Gambino (that he might be retiring), punches up other Marvel scripts, and will be very busy with press for Solo: A Star Wars Story soon.
But Glover wasn’t too busy to throw up some trademark Deadpool middle fingers and tweet out a 15-page script last night, which is almost certainly not a real script for the actual series, but something Glover wrote in response to its cancellation. This is partially because it directly addresses the series’ cancellation, but also because the entire script is Deadpool talking to a rhino:
— donald (@donaldglover) March 28, 2018
— donald (@donaldglover) March 28, 2018
— donald (@donaldglover) March 28, 2018
— donald (@donaldglover) March 28, 2018
The script is called “Finale”, and centres around Deadpool trying to get Sudan – the last male white rhino who died recently – to mate. It also includes not-so-subtle jabs about being “cancelled” by FX as well as another reference to Sanaa Lathan biting Beyoncé. She didn’t, but that was a story making the rounds just yesterday so this whole thing is clearly something Glover threw together in response to the announcement (you can read the entire script here). The man is a living machine of excellence.
Still, the writing on this makes me genuinely excited to see what a Deadpool series in Glover’s hands would have been… or might still be. Here’s hoping FX changes their minds or another network or streaming service is smart enough to pick it up. Has someone called Freeform?