Ever since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, the Star Wars universe has significantly expanded onscreen beyond the core Skywalker Saga and the odd animated series. Not only is a sizable catalog of television shows set in a galaxy far, far away that can be viewed with a Disney+ subscription, Rogue One and Solo marked the first live-action standalone films, with many more upcoming Star Wars movies following suit. But one thing this franchise has yet to do is deliver an R-rated movie, and it turns out Ryan Reynolds has pitched such a cinematic idea, though not for himself.
Reynolds, who’s tied to Disney these days by playing Deadpool in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, shared his rationale on The Box Office Podcast for why an R-rated Star Wars movie would be a worthy addition to the franchise, and it’s a pretty on-point stance. As he told host Scott Mendelson:
I pitched to Disney, I said, ‘Why don’t we do an R-rated ‘Star Wars’ property? It doesn’t have to be overt, A+ characters. There’s a wide range of characters you could use.' And I don’t mean R-rated to be vulgar. R-rated as a Trojan horse for emotion. I always wonder why studios don’t want to just gamble on something like that.
The man who’s been playing Wade Wilson since the Deadpool film series was housed at 20th Century Fox (which has also since been absorbed into Disney) makes a good point about this. For one thing, he’s had a front row seat to seeing a largely family-friendly franchise experience great success by wading into R-rated territory, as Deadpool & Wolverine made over $1.3 billion worldwide last year. Unlike the third Deadpool movie though, Reynolds made it clear that such a Star Wars movie wouldn’t be rated R for vulgarity, but rather to deliver more mature storytelling.
The closest Star Wars has come to this so far is Andor, which concluded its two-season run on the 2025 TV schedule earlier this month. But why stop there? As mentioned earlier, Ryan Reynolds wouldn’t want to star in an R-rated Star Wars movie, but he would like to be involved in its creative process, saying:
I’m not saying I want to be in it. That would be a bad fit. I’d want to produce and write or be a part of behind the scenes. Those kinds of IP subsist really well on scarcity and surprise. We don’t get scarcity really with ‘Star Wars’ because of Disney+, but you can certainly still surprise people.
I’m definitely not one of those people who thinks the Star Wars franchise should start catering chiefly to adults. This is still a mythology that’s primarily focused on entertaining younger fans, with shows like The Mandalorian and Skeleton Crew definitely having a more all-ages feel. That said, I agree with Ryan Reynolds that Disney should take a risk with Star Wars and see how an R-rated movie would do. Disney+ had great success with Andor, which just barely avoided getting into truly R-rated material, so why not see what happens if we fully delve into that realm on the big screen? There’s no reason we can’t have the best of both worlds.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed that there comes a day when Disney and Lucasfilm feel comfortable enough doing this, with or without Ryan Reynolds’ involvement. Until then, The Mandalorian & Grogu is set for release in theaters on May 22, 2026, and the Ryan Gosling-led Star Wars: Starfighter will follow on May 28, 2027.
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