New Marvel story details have emerged about the canceled X-Force movie that almost happened with Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson, a.k.a. Deadpool.

Jeff Wadlow reveals what his Marvel plans were for the X-Force movie with Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool before it got scrapped. Long before Marvel Studios got the rights back, 20th Century Fox had numerous X-Men movies in various stages of development. One of the earlier projects that ended up being one of many canceled X-Men movies was X-Force, based on Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld’s team from Marvel Comics.

In a new interview with A Trip to the Movies with Alex Zane (via Comic Book Movie,) Wadlow opened up on the premise for the X-Force movie, including what characters would have been featured in it. Wadlow also confirmed that the plan was to have Reynolds’ Deadpool in an antagonist role, sharing the following:

I was lucky enough to write an X-Force script for Fox before the original Deadpool film was made. He’d been in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and, as a comic book fan, I knew that was a travesty. That was a total abomination. I wanted to get it right. My pitch for the movie was, ‘If X-Men is about mutants that get to go to private school, what about the mutants that get to go to public school?’ I wrote this movie that was very much inspired by the original X-Men run back in the ’90s. I introduced Cable as this dark mentor for our characters. It was definitely about the young mutants formerly known as the New Mutants. In my movie, it was Cannonball, Boom-Boom, I aged Domino down…Rictor was there. Feral was there. I put them on this road movie. I modelled it after Red Dawn. They were on the run in West Texas,

I wanted this antagonist chasing them the whole time. Deadpool was introduced as a villain in the original X-Force run, so I had our main villain hire a mercenary to hire this group of ragtag villains down and the mercenary hired was Deadpool. He was in motorcycle leathers with this red ballistic face mask. I made it very clear he was going to look just like he did in the comic books. I wanted Ryan [Reynolds] to play the part…I got in touch with Ryan, got him the script and he loved it. He said it was, like, a grand cameo for Deadpool. It was a supporting part. I played him as an antagonist but, ultimately, they turned him in the end.

Wadlow’s X-Force Movie Is Way More Comic Accurate Than The Deadpool 2 Version

Deadpool with parachute as part of X-Force in Deadpool 2

While X-Force characters ended up being part of the Deadpool 2 movie cast, Wadlow’s original idea, which was envisioned as a trilogy, would have been more accurate to the comic version. Having members who are younger and being trained by Cable is a stark contrast to what the audience saw in Deadpool 2. The idea of putting Deadpool in X-Force as a villain also lines up with the source material, whereas Wade was the leader of the team in Deadpool 2.

From everything Wadlow spoke about, having X-Force essentially be a 90s-inspired gritty adventure would also have been a good parallel to the original comics. Also, with other mutants not having access to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters as part of the X-Men, X-Force could have also been another way for the X-Men movie universe to do more social commentary. X-Force could have explored the concept of public school versus private school, with Cable’s mentorship being obviously different from Professor X’s methods.

Time will tell if the X-Force may get reimagined in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Marvel Studios is rebooting the X-Men. Deadpool & Wolverine will likely be the last time the world gets to see that particular version of the X-Force, which had a lot of different members from the canonical version of the team. But for now, the X-Force movie will always remain another one of the lost superhero projects that almost happened.