Deadpool’s insouciant brand of humor makes him a natural for late-night TV, as his recent appearance on CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden proved. Taking note of this, Deadpool fans have created a petition for their favorite motor-mouthed assassin to host the pinnacle of late-night comedy shows, Saturday Night Live.
The Merc With a Mouth appearing on SNL would certainly be a first. While the show has been hosted by fictional characters in the past, most notably by Paul Reubens as Pee Wee Herman and Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci, it has not yet been hosted by a superhero. Hosting the show would be somewhat of a coup for Deadpool, and would no doubt bring renewed publicity to a movie that is already doing pretty well.
While the producers at SNL have yet to respond to the petition, it has not gone unnoticed by Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds, who has responded via Twitter. In typical Deadpool marketing fashion, though, he took his response as another opportunity to satirize contemporary pop culture:
Actually DEADPOOL was going to host back in the 90s, but then this happened. Thank god Tom Hanks was available.https://t.co/7pyPEMysdY— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) February 20, 2016
The long-winded, angry rant and reference to “my Life of Pablo album” is a wink and a nod to leaked audio of a backstage rant by recent SNL musical guest Kanye West. The rant was just one part of an ongoing public meltdown by West as he has been publicizing The Life of Pablo by, for instance, declaring Bill Cosby’s innocence and renewing his feud with Taylor Swift. Whether the negative attention has helped or hurt his new album is hard to tell, since it is only available via the not-terribly-popular Tidal streaming music platform co-founded by West’s occasional collaborator Jay-Z.
Reynolds’ skewering of Kanye West is one more example of why he would be a good fit for host of SNL, either in character as Deadpool or even as himself. The latter option seems more likely, though, since an entire show’s worth of sketches with Deadpool shoehorned in would be a little one-note and difficult to pull off. If Reynolds hosted as himself, he could appear as Deadpool in a sketch or two, or even do the monologue in character but then play different roles in other sketches that weren’t Deadpool-centric. He would also be able to do send-ups of his less popular roles, like the much-maligned Green Lantern or the even-more-maligned R.I.P.D.
Time will tell if the push for a Deadpool appearance on SNL pays off, but it was the persistence of both Reynolds and fans that led to the surprise success of the Deadpool movie, so there’s always a chance that lightning will strike twice.
Deadpool is now in theaters. X-Men: Apocalypse will hit theaters on May 27, 2016; Gambit sometime in 2017; Wolverine 3 on March 3, 2017; and an unannounced X-Men film on July 13, 2018. The New Mutants is also in development. We’ll let you know when Deadpool 2 gets an official release date.
Source: Ryan Reynolds
