It was a long road for Ryan Reynolds to get Deadpool & Wolverine set up at Marvel Studios after Disney bought 20th Century Fox.
Kevin Feige wasn’t initially sure what to do with the character or how exactly to incorporate him into the MCU. Even though he kept saying they wouldn’t compromise the R-rated aspect of the character, Feige kept passing on the pitches that Reynolds was making.
Reynolds’ first pitch to Feige was a “Rashomon story about Wolverine and Deadpool and something that they got into together.” Reynolds explained to Empire that the story was “told from three completely different perspectives. It was a way to make a large-scale movie in a very small way.”
A Rashomon-style story is where the same event is recounted by several characters, and the stories differ in ways that are impossible to reconcile. It shows that two or more people can view the same event quite differently.
Feige passed on that version of the film. Feige explained: “The truth is, I wasn’t even sure how to incorporate Deadpool yet.”
He added: “I was very much thinking about how to bring mutants and the X-Men into [the MCU], and I thought it needed to be more than just playing the hits. But the truth is, Ryan is an idea machine. So he may have pitched that to me, but he also pitched 25 other thoughts and ideas.”
Reynolds then confirmed: “I went back to the drawing board, and I wrote up about 18 different treatments. Some of them almost like a Sundance film, a budget of under $10 million, sort of using the IP in a way that they previously hadn’t used, and I pitched bigger movies, and I pitched things in-between.”
I would love to read those other treatments for the film! It would be fun to see the different scenarios that Reynolds envisioned for the third Deadpool movie.
After exploring lots of different avenues, they finally agreed on where to go with the story, and they are just going to let Deadpool be Deadpool.
Executive producer Wendy Jacobson added: “We definitely spun our wheels a little bit trying to find the reason for this movie to be. Once Hugh raised his hand, two months later we were prepping. It was honestly one of the fastest turnarounds I’ve ever seen.”
Shawn Levy is directing the movie and the confirmed cast for the movie includes Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, Morena Baccarin and Stefan Kapicic as Vanessa and Colossus, Matthew Macfadyen as a TVA Agent, and Leslie Uggams as Blind Al.
They are joined by Brianna Hildebrand and Shioli Kutsuna, who will also return to the franchise as Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Negasonic Teenage Warhead’s girlfriend Yukio. It was previously confirmed that Jennifer Garner will return as Elektra in the movie.
Deadpool & Wolverine will hit theaters on July 26th!