Fox gives greenlight to DEADPOOL sequel; writers talk characters and X-FORCE.

20th Century Fox already has their eyes set on a sequel to Tim Miller’s DEADPOOL after positive response and great box office estimates. The film is expected to open to at least $65 million during the holiday weekend and up to $70 million during its first four-day holiday weekend, on a relatively low budget of $58 million. According to The Hollywood Reporter, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are already signed on to work on the follow-up.

Though director Miller isn’t officially signed yet, Fox has every intention on keeping the creative team together along with star Ryan Reynolds.

When can fans expect to see a sequel? Though it’s too early to tell, early speculation suggested that Fox might rush the production to takeover the June 2, 2017 date which originally belonged to the FANTASTIC FOUR sequel.

“We hope that it doesn’t take Fantastic Four’s release date because that’s awfully, awfully soon,” Reese admitted to Hey U Guys. “We like to take our time, we’re lazy screenwriters.” Wernick added “Look, that’s entirely above our heads, but we’ll write the very best screenplay we can write if we’re fortunate enough to get that sequel, and we’ll write it as quickly as they tell us we need to write it. When they say jump, we say how high.”

Fan-favorite characters that may be incorporated into a sequel or future films include mutants like Cable, Siryn and Domino. When asked about Deadpool’s future costars Wernick said “Yes, absolutely. I think those are characters who are near and dear to Deadpool fan’s hearts and characters we would like to explore down the line if we’re so fortunate to have sequels. Cable is one that we will absolutely visit if we’re allowed to keep moving forward with multiple movies. We’ve always wanted to honor the fans first, so the fan’s favorite characters, that mean a lot to them, we will take a long, hard look at moving forward.”

The screenwriting duo also expressed interest in bringing X-FORCE to the big screen, which was a project originally being developed by “Kick Ass 2” writer/ director Jeff Wadlow. That script’s allegedly been thrown out, so the potential for Reese and Wernick to take it on is definitely a possibility. “Getting in to more of an ensemble piece is something we would cherish,” Wernick teased. “X-Force is beloved and we love it, and Deadpool is centric to that world, and we’d love to bring an X-Force movie into the X Universe.”

Reynolds also shared his love for the team, telling Filmstarts “There’s so much material to mine in just the X-Men universe … In the future, if we’re doing a bunch more Deadpool movies, we’re really going to explore the X-Men a lot. We’ll see. And maybe X-Force — X-Force is my priority. I really want to get that in.”