Popverse's top stories of the day

• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Watch: Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]
• Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]

You'll recall Popverse's reporting on whether Ryan Reynolds would return as Wade Wilson after Deadpool & Wolverine. The actor's answer has been 'no' more than once, but the place Disney carved out for the Merc with a Mouth (and the stacks of cash it made them) has us pretty sure we'll see Reynolds donning his katana pajamas again eventually. (We need to find out why Thor was crying, after all.) For now, though, Reynolds is switching his allegiance to another pop culture rodent, as we've recently learned the Free Guy actor will be tackling an upcoming Mighty Mouse feature.

The news comes to us via Variety, who report that Paramount Animation has recruited Reynold's production company, Maximum Effort, to craft an animated feature based on the eight-decade-old anthropomorphic Superman riff, Mighty Mouse. Matt Lieberman, who teamed with Reynolds on Free Guy and whose other credits include The Addams Family, The Christmas Chronicles, and Scoob!, will pen the script.

Variety also makes mention of the fact that a Mighty Mouse feature project has been simmering in the IP cauldron for some time now. In 2019, for example, Deadline reported that Jon and Erich Hoeber, writers of sharksploitation The Meg, would write the character for the big screen, but that idea ultimately fell through.

What we don't know is when to expect Paramount's Mighty Mouse to "Here I Come to Save the Day" his way into theaters, or who'll be providing the voice of the titular rodent. If we were gamblers here Popverse, we'd lay some money on the idea that Reynolds himself will bring the character to life - the actor has shown a penchant for voice work before in projects like Pokémon: Detective Pikachu and Turbo, both of which were films about cute little critters with superpowers.

Just saying, the guy's got an MO. Why change it up when it's technically the logline of a movie?

Deadpool & Wolverine is streaming now on Disney+.

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• With Daredevil, and spinoffs from Black Panther, What If, and more, Marvel Studios' 2025 Disney+ slate is bigger than ever, and that might be a big deal for the future
• If Kraven the Hunter flops, Sony's Spider-Man Universe could look for a Marvel-assisted reboot
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.