Ryan Reynolds wants to make R-rated Star Wars

Deadpool star and celebrity gin flinger Ryan Reynolds says he tried to get Disney to make an “R-rated” Star Wars project.

During an episode of The Box Office podcast, Reynolds said he pitched Disney the idea.

“I pitched to Disney, I said, why don’t we do an R-rated Star Wars property?” said Reynolds.

However, the concept isn’t what you might expect, of a rude, wise-cracking Deadpool-like character shoehorned into the Star Wars Universe.

“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,” said Reynolds. “R-rated as a Trojan horse for emotion. I always wonder why studios don’t want to just gamble on something like that.”

The US’s R rating is perhaps closest to the UK’s 15 certificate, although the two aren’t exactly the same.

Reynolds explained he didn’t want to star in the film or show, saying it would be “a bad fit,” but that he would be interested in writing or producing instead.

He suggests such a project would bring something that’s been kinda missing from Star Wars in recent times: surprise.

“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,” says Reynolds

To date, none of the Star Wars movies has gone beyond a PG-13 rating in the US, or a 12A in the UK. Even TV show Andor, which is often called the most grown-up Star Wars property to date, is rated TV-14 in the US and a 12 by the BBFC.

The fortunes of the kind of Star Wars content Reynolds is talking about may well rest on the success of Andor. And it’s quite hard to tell exactly how much of a hit its second season has been.

Nielsen ratings suggest Andor racked-up 721 million minutes of watch time over the week of April 21, in which it was released . This only placed it at number 10 in the overall streaming chart, but the show did beat the original 2022 season, which racked-up 624 million minutes over its first week.

Not hitting anything near the top of the chart should come with some important contextual notes. Disney+ only typically releases three episodes of its TV seasons at launch, not the entire binge-ready bunch. And big-name Netflix shows have a clear advantage thanks to greater subscriber numbers.

Disney+ has somewhere in the region of 150 million subscribers, while Netflix has more than 300 million. Each minute of watch time arguably signifies more in a Disney+ show.