It has been nearly two months since the premiere of Deadpool, yet the film’s impact can still be felt radiating throughout pop culture. With the wild success of Fox’s raunchy, bloody, super anti-hero romp, a stagnant project in development came to life once more at DC, and in less than a month Wonder Woman’s Jason Fuchs signed on to write Lobo.

While some fans may have misinterpreted the move as DC jumping on the gory comic book hype train, Lobo has actually been in the works for years, as Deadpool director Tim Miller recently confirmed. During the press day for Deadpool’s Blu-ray/DVD release, Miller stated that he had met with DC about the project before he began work on Fox’s new hit.

“I met on Lobo two, three years ago,” said Miller, who mentioned the movie while talking about what might be the rise of the R-rated superhero film. Were Lobo to make it to production, the studio would have a rich expanse of takes on the character from his several comic book story lines – but they’d also have a brutal, otherworldly new vigilante to experiment with on the R-rated platform. For his part, Miller is into the idea and hopes that studios will “take more risks” on these types of films.

Brad Peyton was set to direct the first iteration of Lobo back in 2012, but said that the film ultimately met its demise when the character’s star power didn’t measure up enough for executives. “With Marvel, they’re now doing smaller characters like ‘Ant-Man’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’” Peyton had said. “They obviously had to start, though, with their big guns and set up ‘The Avengers.’ I kind of feel like that’s where DC is now. They’re setting that team up.” With the release of Man of Steel, Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, the upcoming Suicide Squad film, Wonder Woman, and the formation of the Justice League on the horizon, one can assume that things have come full-circle, and the executives at Warner Bros. seem much more open to broadening their universe.

“They had a script then … and I think they even did a test for it early on. I think it’s something that filmmakers and sometimes the studios want to do. They just haven’t seen that they can actually make money.

I think the spin on [R-rated superhero films] sometimes is a negative one and I don’t think it should be. I feel like, as a filmmaker outside, I would just be going, ‘oh great! Somebody, you know, has shown a little bit of a path forward and I can make the project that I wanted to make that was a little risky.”

At the moment, there aren’t very many details surrounding Lobo’s progress. As mentioned before, Jason Fuchs will be on the script, but there aren’t many other names attached to the project and no clear release date. Stick with Screen Rant for future updates on Lobo as they come.

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is now playing in U.S. theaters. Suicide Squad will arrive on August 5, 2016, followed by Wonder Woman on June 2, 2017; Justice League Part One on November 17, 2017; The Flash on March 16, 2018; Aquaman on July 27, 2018; an untitled DC Film on October 5, 2018; Shazam on April 5, 2019; Justice League Part Two on June 14, 2019; an untitled DC film on November 1, 2019; Cyborg on April 3, 2020; and Green Lantern Corps on June 19, 2020.

Source: HitFix