Ryan Reynolds is planting roots at Fox, the Century City-based studio that is being acquired by Disney.
Fox has signed a three-year first-look deal with the star and producer behind the studio’s Deadpool movies, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed, and has lined up a live-action feature version of Clue as Reynolds’ first project out of the gate.
The move is noteworthy as it keeps the actor in the Fox playground well into the merger, which is expected to take about a year to wrap up, provided regulatory hurdles are overcome. Reynolds scored the biggest hit of his career with Deadpool, featuring the saucy and racy Marvel anti-hero, and he (along with many observers) have wondered how the character would fit into the cleaner Marvel universe movies that Disney releases.
On the Clue front, Reynolds is reuniting with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the writers of Deadpool and its upcoming sequel.
Reynolds will produce via his shingle, Maximum Effort, as will Allspark Pictures, the producing arm of Hasbro.
Clue is the popular board game that has a murder-mystery premise: Players take on the characters, with monikers such as Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard, to find out who killed the victim, what weapon was used (lead pipe? gun?) and where in an English mansion the murder took place.
The game was previously adapted into the 1985 pic that starred Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn and Christopher Lloyd. In 2008, Universal tried to develop a version to be directed by Gore Verbinski but never solved the mystery of how best to bring it to the big screen. The rights then lapsed and landed at Fox in 2016.
Jan. 22, 4:10 p.m. A previous version of this story incorrectly characterized the 1985 movie.
