Donald Glover Publishes Spoof ‘Deadpool’ Script After Exiting Series

Until last week, comedian and television creator Donald Glover was working on an animated series for FX about the Marvel superhero Deadpool, a violent mercenary character known for his wisecracks and toilet humor.

By this week, the project had been canceled and Glover was on Twitter publicly raising more questions about what led to his departure from the show.

The project, planned as a 10-episode run for the FXX channel and announced in May, was to have been a collaboration with Glover’s brother Steven, another pairing of the siblings behind the show “Atlanta,” which airs on FX. (FXX is FX’s sister channel, and both are owned by 21st Century Fox.)

But on Saturday, FX, citing “creative differences,” announced that the project had been canceled. Its statement said the Glovers had agreed to part ways with the network and with Marvel television.

In an article about the announcement, Variety said the show “may have been a casualty of Donald Glover’s packed schedule.”

Glover, who also releases music under the name Childish Gambino, disputed that characterization in a tweet thread on Wednesday: “For the record: I wasn’t too busy to work on ‘Deadpool,'” he said.

He then posted pages of a script that used the Deadpool character — who is known for speaking to readers or moviegoers directly — to think through the cancellation.

In the script, which is filled with pop culture references, including several that allude to events from the last few days, Deadpool considers whether racism was a factor in the cancellation and remarks upon specific scripts that may have alienated the Glovers’ collaborators.

Glover’s tweet thread was a remarkable way to shed light upon industry drama that does not often reach social media, a public statement in the form of a puzzle in the form of a script that both confounded and intrigued his fans.

The actor had recently given an interview to The New Yorker in which he commented extensively on his relationship with FX while working on “Atlanta,” a critically acclaimed show that has won two Golden Globes and two Emmys. In it, he suggested that the network did not understand the show’s characters and that he had to mislead the network to get his vision on the air.

But John Solberg, a network spokesman for FX, said that no one at the network had taken issue with those comments and that the unraveling of the Deadpool project had nothing to do with the interview. He said that the network had supported the brothers’ vision for the show but that Marvel owned the intellectual property rights to the Deadpool character and had decided to go a different way. He also emphasized that there was no acrimony between FX and Marvel, and said that creative differences often led to projects falling apart.

The 14-page script Glover posted to Twitter was labeled as if it were the series finale of the canceled show. Halfway through the story, Deadpool, who seems throughout as if he may be speaking for Glover, addresses the show’s cancellation directly.

“You know, I’m not mad about this whole ‘canceled thing,'” the script reads. “I actually think it’s a good thing. I mean, is it even a good time to have a violent, gun loving white man ranting on TV?”

There is a brief pause, and the script continues: “Other than the PRESIDENT!”

Deadpool then considers the factors that may have led to the show’s cancellation. He wonders whether it could have been canceled because of racism. He then begins to mention what may have been specific episodes written by the Glovers, including one about goat yoga (a real thing), another that included singer Taylor Swift, and a third in which a character makes a rude joke about people who buy Marvel toys.

Marvel declined to comment. Glover did not respond to emails.

The script, which says it was written by Glover, includes several references to recent news events: jokes about the rise of bitcoin and Facebook’s recent privacy scandal, as well as digs at Ben Carson and President Donald Trump. It takes mild shots at the rappers Rich the Kid and 6ix9ine. (A recurring gag is that the characters to whom Deadpool is speaking do not understand his references to black culture.)

Deadpool also refers to the police killing of Stephon Clark in Sacramento, California, this month and to a GQ magazine article published Monday that related a story about an anonymous female celebrity said to have bitten Beyoncé.