By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 20 seconds ago

In recent years, the MCU has stumbled, going from regularly producing billion-dollar films to churning out financial disappointments and even outright box office bombs. Meanwhile, the DCEU completely failed, and James Gunn’s DCU rose from its ashes.

Recently, Gunn revealed his desire to have Deadpool appear in Peacemaker Season 2. It would be the ultimate way of saving both the MCU and the DCU by bringing the two universes together.

The Ultimate What If…?

Peacemaker’s second season involved the titular character and his allies visiting a parallel Earth where the Nazis won World War 2. When Variety asked if there were any other alternate realities he wanted to explore, Gunn (while laughing) replied, “I wanted them to open a door and see Deadpool in a room.” He went so far as talking to Ryan Reynolds about it; the actor really wanted to do it, but the cameo never happened because, in Gunn’s words, “I would’ve had to go through some pretty, pretty big hoops to do that.”

While he didn’t elaborate, those hoops likely involved an army of lawyers from Disney that would have fought any attempt to bring one of their most popular characters into the DCU’s hit TV show. After all, why should the MCU help a rival cinematic universe succeed, especially when Marvel’s biggest summer movie (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) lost at the box office to Gunn’s Superman? However, the blunt truth is that allowing crossovers between the MCU and the DCU would be the easiest way to save Marvel.

The Secret To Successful Superhero Cinema

Why is that? Simply put, moviegoers are always likelier to see a tentpole superhero movie if it involves multiple popular characters, which is a big part of why Deadpool & Wolverine was so successful. Each character is immensely popular on their own, and putting them onscreen led to a movie that cut and clawed its way to over $1.3 billion at the box office.

This formula worked for the DCEU as well. Even though it was critically reviled (and rightfully so), Batman v. Superman earned over $874 million at the box office, making it the second-highest-grossing film in this cinematic universe. The combination of poor reviews and major profit reveals a simple truth: regardless of the film’s bad word of mouth, audiences flocked to the theater because they wanted to see two of the biggest heroes in pop culture history fight each other.

A License To Print Money

Therefore, if both Marvel and DC want to print money, they should start creating entire crossover films of popular characters. If having Batman fight Superman put so many butts in the theater, imagine the kind of box office a Batman v. Spider-Man film or Batman v. Iron Man film would draw. Or, for that matter, how profitable a big-budget Avengers vs. Justice League movie could be!

Considering that each cinematic universe has made the multiverse part of its canon, it would be pretty easy to explain why these crossovers are even possible in the first place. But no matter how plausible the explanation is or how well the script is written, all of this is just an excuse to put the most popular characters from each franchise in a movie together. These movies would make major bank because fans of each cinematic universe would rush to the theater, if only to see who won the inevitable knock-down, drag-out fight.

There’s no time like the present to do a Marvel/DC crossover, either: the MCU is getting rebooted after Avengers: Secret Wars, and the DCU is still trying to flesh itself out after the success of Superman and Peacemaker. What better than a crossover years in the making to establish that each cinematic universe is now completely different than anything we’ve seen before?

This Looks Like a Job For Superman

This kind of crossover would save Marvel because it served as the cure to so-called “superhero fatigue.” I say so-called because the public isn’t sick of superhero films (both Deadpool & Wolverine and Superman were huge successes); rather, they are sick of the MCU combining C-list characters and D-list writing to create films as bland in creativity as they are bloated with bad effects (looking at you, The Eternals). But crossovers like Avengers vs. the Justice League would help make Marvel and DC piles of money so deep that Lex Luthor could swim through them like Scrooge McDuck.

Right now, though, we’re getting less Avengers vs. the Justice League and more Avengers vs. Audience Boredom. The boredom is starting to win, so it’s time to call in some major cameos from the competition. In other words, Kevin Feige, this looks like a job for Superman!