X-Men: Days of Future Past writer and producer Simon Kinberg has said the Deadpool movie is part of the shared X-Men universe.
Last month we heard the Deadpool movie has been given the go ahead by 20th Century Fox. Now, Kinberg has offered ComicBook.com an insight into how Deadpool ties into the X-Men universe.
“There’s definitely a sort of overall plan that we’ve all been talking about for the X-Men universe now, and Deadpool obviously fits into that," Kinberg said. "I guess I would say it's part of certainly an overall timeline and [the] thought process that goes into these films, some of which is inspired by the comics and some [of] which is inspired by seeing what Marvel’s done with telling a larger tapestry and linking all those movies together, even as they stand independently, as well. The same kind of thought is going to go into these X-Men movies at Fox.”
While Fox firmly have the film rights to Deadpool due to his X-Men-related comic book origins, for quite awhile it seemed the Deadpool solo film might be its own entity with no acknowledgement of the events of the X-Men films. This, however, won’t be the case it seems, and Deadpool will exist in the same cinematic reality as Professor X, Magneto, Mystique and Wolverine.
In keeping with Deadpool’s meta nature, an early version of the Deadpool movie script included a winking (and snarking) reference to the less than beloved version of the character that appeared in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. We’ll see if this is still the case when the film opens on February 16th, 2016.