Deadpool Creator Rob Liefield Says Lionsgate Didn’t Believe in Superhero Movies

The creator of Deadpool, Rob Liefeld, has had no small success in seeing his comic book superheroes turned into big screen successes in Deadpool and Deadpool 2 from 20th Century Fox. Now he’s encouraging another studio to get in on the superhero movie craze.

On Twitter, Liefeld commented on how he told Lionsgate that they needed to get into the superhero genre, but the studio brushed him off.

“Honestly, told all the guys at Lionsgate that they needed to be in the comic book super hero biz years back,” Liefeld tweeted. “They gave me all sorts of data as to how that was going to fade….hmmm. How’s that worked out? Never too late friends.”

It does seem like Lionsgate may have latched on to the wrong trend. While other studios were amping up their superhero games, Lionsgate went all in on YA sci-fi after finding success with its adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy. Lionsgate tried to recreate that success with The Divergent Series based on the novels by Veronica Roth, but they had for less success and eventually canceled the fourth and final film in the series.

Lionsgate has produced one superhero movie, Punisher: War Zone, but that film was a box office bomb in 2008, the same year that Iron Man opened to huge success and launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which maybe didn’t do anything to bolster Lionsgate’s confidence in the idea that they could find untapped success in the genre.

Lionsgate is producing the upcoming Hellboy movie. Despite being drenched in horror, fantasy, and pulp aesthetic, Hellboy is a superhero at heart. With Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and even Valiant Comics all already at home at other studios, Hellboy may be Lionsgate’s best shot at making a dent in the superhero cinema landscape.

It is unclear what prompted Liefeld to recall these early conversations with Lionsgate, but fans who follow him Twitter know that he’s a big supporter of superhero cinema in general, often ridiculing critics and analysts’ frequent predictions of the superhero movie fad coming to a crashing halt, especially in a year like 2018 when films like Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War broke box office records.

Do you think Lionsgate should get into the superhero movie business? Let us know in the comments!

Deadpool and Deadpool 2 are both now available on home media.

Other upcoming X-Men movies include Dark Phoenix on June 7, 2019, The New Mutants on August 2nd, 2019, and Gambit on March 13th, 2020.