The Wolverine 3 R-rating decision happened before Deadpool's success

Hugh Jackman's wanted an R-rated Wolverine since 2011, and as of last week the official confirmation came down the pipe from X-Men producer Simon Kinberg: The Wolverine 3 will definitely be R-rated. It's been rumored for a while now, those first reports hitting the web shortly after the R-rated Deadpool took all the money at the box office. According to Kinberg, the Merc with a Mouth's success didn't impact plans for Wolvie's third outing as that was the intended direction for his closing chapter anyway.

"And what we're doing with the Wolverine movie... that wasn't impacted by Deadpool," he tells Den of Geek. "We'd made the decision for Wolverine to be R-rated before Deadpool came out. But I think there's even more confidence about having made that decision now that you see that an R-rated Deadpool movie can do better than any X-Men movie's ever done.”

“When there are films that want to be raunchier, want to be darker, want to be violent or R-rated, [Fox will] be open to it," he adds. "And not every movie should be. I don't think that the main X-Men movies should be R-rated; I don't think they're R-rated stories."

That's encouraging to hear, but to say flat-out that the main X-Men movies aren't R-rated stories? There might be some comic book fans who disagree, as there's plenty of happenings on the page that - if loyally adapted - could easily land the next sequel an R. But with the main series designed to appeal to larger audiences, it's unlikely that thinking will shift on that one.

As for other spin-offs? Kinberg's still promises a mature adaptation of another fan favorite title should it come to fruition. "If we were to make an X-Force movie, that probably should be R-rated." Seeing as Ryan Reynolds considers that film "a priority", we might be getting more R-rated content from Fox than PG-13 over the next few years. Fuckin' A!

Directed by James Mangold and starring Hugh Jackman, Boyd Holbrook, Richard E. Grant, Stephen Merchant, Eriq Lasalle and Elise Neal, Wolverine 3 opens in the UK on March 2, 2017 and in US theaters on March 3, 2017.

Images: 20th Century Fox

Gem Seddon is GamesRadar+'s west coast Entertainment News Reporter, working to keep all of you updated on all of the latest and greatest movies and shows on streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Outside of entertainment journalism, Gem can frequently be found writing about the alternative health and wellness industry, and obsessing over all things Aliens and Terminator on Twitter.