As you are likely well aware, the Walt Disney Company bought 20th Century Fox back in 2019, just one year after “Deadpool 2” hit theaters, and in the process, became the owners of all of Fox’s Marvel properties, The Fantastic Four, X-Men, and the Deadpool franchise. But if you’re wondering why it took so long for a third ‘Deadpool’ movie to happen, six years after the second film, well, we finally have answers.
According to a new Empire interview with the cast and creators of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige actually turned down Ryan Reynolds’ original pitch. And that pitch? Well, it’s the same one that Reynolds posted on social media back in 2021 regarding a Logan and Wade Wilson film with ties to Akira Kurosawa’s perspective-shifting classic, “Rashomon” (1950).
“[It was a] ‘Rashomon’ story about Wolverine and Deadpool and something that they got into together, but told from three completely different perspectives,” Reynolds told Empire this week. “It was a way to make a large-scale movie in a very small way.”
And Feige apparently turned down the pitch, in part, because he and Marvel were still trying to figure out how to include Deadpool and the other characters Disney now owned from the Fox era into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“The truth is, I wasn’t even sure how to incorporate Deadpool yet,” the Marvel chief admitted. “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.”
Feige’s not kidding; Reynolds explained that he was not dissuaded and pitched dozens of alternative takes to the Feige.
“I went back to the drawing board, and I wrote up about 18 different treatments,” Reynolds said. “Some of them almost like a Sundance film, a budget of under $10 million, sort of using the I.P. in a way that they previously hadn’t used, and I pitched bigger movies, and I pitched things in-between.”
Eventually, Feige and Reynolds landed on the idea that is present in the upcoming “Deadpool & Wolverine” movie coming out in July.
“We definitely spun our wheels a little bit trying to find the reason for this movie to be,” executive producer Wendy Jacobson said. “Once Hugh raised his hand, two months later, we were prepping. It was honestly one of the fastest turnarounds I’ve ever seen.”
Jacobson’s timeline thoughts sound very accurate. Hugh Jackman revealed that he finally said yes to Ryan Reynolds’ constant pleas to return as Wolverine in August of 2022, and both stars revealed the news via a video announcement one month later at the end of September.
Persistence is key, kids. “Deadpool & Wolverine” opens on July 26, 2024.