In the run up to the release of Deadpool, those involved in making it have been keen to say that the character would retain the pansexuality he had in the comics. However, it didn’t surprise many to hear that this wouldn’t mean Ryan Reynolds would be bedding guys in the movie, and that instead it would rely on the Hollywood standby of suggesting he’d be happy with any gender, while only showing him with a girl (Morena Baccarin).

Reynolds is keen to let the world know though that he’s not the roadblock to showing a more diverse sexuality for the sarcastic superhero. Variety reports that on the red carpet of the film’s New York premiere, he said of Deadpool’s pansexuality, “I love that about Deadpool. I love that he can break any boundary. In the future, I hope we get to do that more.”

Reading between the lines you get the impression he’d have quite liked to have gone further with this movie, which instead restricts its hints to things such as Deadpool mentioning the idea of having a fling with Wolverine, or being open to experimentation during an otherwise straight sex montage.

As for the character ever having a boyfriend, Reynold thinks that would be ‘nice’, adding, “I certainly wouldn’t be the guy standing in the way of that. That would be great.”

Screenwriter Rhett Reese also had a few things to say about it, adding, “We knew that was part of the comics. We wanted to honor that in the movie. But we did it in subtle ways.”

Producer Simon Kinberg meanwhile added, “There’s veiled references to it in this film. It’s in the DNA of the character.”

So why is the film so reticent to show Deadpool being pansexual rather than just hinting he doesn’t only like girls? The suggestion many have put forward is that Fox already thought it was taking a risk with a wisecracking, foul-mouthed, violent, R-rated superhero movie with sexual content, and that adding anything too ‘gay’ would have been a step too far. Big movies like this are still reliant on foreign box office, and with many countries still very homophobic (and with some still liable to ban a film if it has same sex content), there’s a fear in Hollywood that that ‘gay stuff’ will dent the global box office. Indeed, some in Hollywood aren’t even worried about foreign box office, as they have concerns, whether valid or not, that large swatches of the US population won’t show up if they think it’s going to be too ‘gay’.

If Deadpool is a success, it may encourage the studio behind it to be a little bolder with a sequel once they know it’s definitely got an audience, especially as those involved in making it seem happy to do so. However at the moment it’s going to be extremely difficult to break entrenched attitudes amongst studio executives, meaning that even minor queer characters in blockbuster-type movies are still exceptionally rare, and showing them actually doing something that isn’t straight is almost unheard of.