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Donald Glover's 'Deadpool' Script Is the Weirdest Thing You'll Read All Day

Childish Gambino shared a fake screenplay on Twitter for his cancelled superhero series that involves white rhinos, 6ix9ine jokes, and Deadpool trying to start a rap career.
L: J. Merritt/Getty Images

Never forget that, despite his status as a household name, Donald Glover is a consummate postmodernist who isn't afraid to get extremely irreverent and esoteric in his works. Never forget that his 2013 Childish Gambino album Because the Internet was essentially a companion piece to a 72-page screenplay that explored wealth and fame through the lens of… wanting to be Rick Ross, I think. Glover has since reigned in his weirdness to the focused, hypnotic surrealism of Atlanta, but he's gone and let loose that weirdness once again by writing a strange-as-hell speculative Deadpool script and doling out the entire thing in a lengthy Twitter thread.

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For context, Glover and his brother/usual creative partner Stephen were reportedly working on an animated series centered around the edgelord's favorite Marvel superhero for FX, but news broke over the weekend that the two were no longer involved with the project for unknown reasons. In an apparent shot at Marvel and Fox, who owns the rights to the Deadpool property, Glover posted a fake script to his Twitter account that purports to be for what would have been the finale to his Deadpool series. Even if it's an elaborate joke—which it likely is—it is dazzlingly, fascinatingly strange in its parade of pop culture references.

Much of this "finale" revolves around Deadpool in Kenya trying to save the last male white rhino. Glover's version of the character is a rap fan and aspiring rapper, mentioning artists like Rich the Kid and YBN Nahmir throughout. He also makes timely cracks at the Beyoncé face-biting incident, Facebook's security woes, and—perhaps most notably—at 6ix9ine's sexual misconduct charges.

DEADPOOL: Oh! "Jackin' llamas from eleven-year-olds" sounds awful. That's not what I'm sayin'. I'm not Tekashi69. (clarifying) I'm an AMAZING rapper.

The offending sentence is actually a Fortnite reference, natch.

In between the bizarre wisecracks and inside baseball, the script seems to criticize Marvel for making surface-level attempts at inclusivity and diversity ("Doesn't Marvel have enough feel-good minority shows that everyone supports but doesn't watch?") and has Deadpool wondering aloud if his own show wasn't picked up because it was too black ("the references were all black too. I heard thy went over the lunch budget ordering Jamaican food twice a week.") Again, who knows how serious all of this is; whether it's a vicious attack, a light-hearted satire, or if it's too damn convoluted to succeed as either, but you won't read anything like it in any actual Marvel series or film. You can find Glover's entire Deadpool screenplay in its original thread here, or archived in this very handy Imgur post here in case it gets deleted.

Phil is on Twitter.