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Marvel Studios needed the success of Deadpool and Wolverine in 2024, and it delivered, grossing over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. In a world where moviegoing habits were changed by the COVID-19 pandemic, that's nothing to sneeze at. (I'll see myself out.) Deadpool and Wolverine demonstrated that there was still a lot of love for the 20th Century Fox-era X-Men films among moviegoers worldwide, and pushed Marvel back to the top of the cinematic charts when things were beginning to look dark for the studio.

Artist Rob Liefeld, perhaps best known as the creator of Deadpool and Cable, offered a less sunny picture of the Merc with a Mouth's return to the big screen on Mark Millar's podcast, Millar Time, however. He purports that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was encountering roadblocks while developing what would eventually become Deadpool and Wolverine. Liefeld said, "[Feige] was just, I think, having trouble grappling with the fact that [Deadpool] was not his franchise. And my Disney insiders had told me for years - you wanna know why there's six years between Deadpool 2 and [Deadpool] 3? Because [Feige] didn't want to make it. He only made it because his goose had been cooked on so many flops, that they're like, 'We gotta greenlight this.'" 

Just to be clear, this is what Liefeld believes was Feige's thought process during the development of Deadpool and Wolverine, so do with that what you will. That said, let's also not forget that between Deadpool 2 (2018) and Deadpool and Wolverine (2023), 20th Century Fox - a Big Five Hollywood studio - and its conglomerate, 21st Century Fox, were bought by Disney. The acquisition of Fox and all of its assets was finalized in March of 2019. Of course, I don't need to remind you of what happened in March of the next year. 

Whenever I went to the movies during the first couple years of the COVID-19 pandemic, I asked myself whether the film I wanted to see was worth the risk of getting a debilitating illness. For films like Dune: Part One, The Green Knight, and Nobody, that was a yes. Obviously, I wasn't privy to where Kevin Feige's thoughts were during this period, but I will ask one question. Do we think Deadpool and Wolverine would have grossed over a billion dollars had it come out in 2020 or 2021? 

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters