It’s taken six long years for a third “Deadpool” movie to arrive and then morph into “Deadpool & Wolverine,” and the reasons seemed clear from the jump: integrating a foul-mouthed R-rated character into the PG-13 world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe proved to be tricky and complicated for Marvel, Ryan Reynolds and everyone involved. And according to a new Vanity Fair story, a third “Deadpool” movie was almost scrapped—it took Hugh Jackman to change his mind about reprising his famous Wolverine character before the movie finally came to life.
According to the magazine in a new profile, in 2019, when Disney’s sale of 20th Century Fox finally went through, excitement about how “X-Men” and mutant character appearing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe “were tempered by worry about how the family-friendly House of Mouse would tolerate Deadpool’s ribaldry and shenanigans.”
Clearly, the ‘how does an R-rated character fit into a PG-13?’ world puzzled Marvel Studios at first (the solution is to make “Deadpool & Wolverine” R-rated, though it’ll be interesting to see how they solve this in the PG-13 movies).
“Deadpool & Wolverine” is credited to six writers and what sounds like three different teams: Ryan Reynolds and “Deadpool & Wolverine” director Shawn Levy, original “Deadpool” franchise writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells (known for “Robot Chicken: Star Wars” and Marvel projects like “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” and “Marvel Zombies”). And that doesn’t even mention “Bobs Burgers” writers Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin, who were initially hired to write a draft but didn’t receive credit on the final film.
Vanity Fair says, “Levy, Reynolds, and a team of writers toiled for months trying to crack a new ‘Deadpool’ story, but nothing was coming together as they hoped. Out of options, the pair prepared to let it go.”
In the feature story, Ryan Reynolds said that trying to crack the story of a third ‘Deadpool’ movie before Hugh Jackman was interested proved difficult.
“I felt like I spiritually owed one more, but just trying to figure out what that would be—and how that would come about—took a while,” he said. “There’s a reason that it’s been six years since the last one.”
“I had already been talking to Marvel here and there, pitching different ideas—a lot of different ideas,” he continued. “It was hard to find my place in the MCU. It was hard to understand or find my footing, even though I was incredibly reverent of it. And so is Deadpool—a big fan. Ultimately, that’s part of what the story became.”
Levy echoed the idea that cracking a third “Deadpool” movie was challenging for all the writers involved and admitted he almost told Kevin Feige that now wasn’t the right moment for a “Deadpool 3.”
“We frankly struggled to find a story that felt original and non-derivative of the other two Deadpool movies,” Levy said. “It had to be deserving of the first Deadpool entry into the MCU, but also feel grounded because this is an earthbound, gritty, realistic superhero franchise. We had fits and starts. And Ryan and I were right at the edge of saying to Kevin, ‘You know what? Maybe now is not the right moment because we’re not coming up with a story.’ And that is the moment when Ryan’s phone rang and it was Hugh calling from his car.”
Serendipity struck, and the rest was history, but it’s interesting—though not surprising given how long the threequel took to get made—to hear that even the director and star couldn’t really find a story that inspired them.
Further fortune struck because the day Hugh Jackman called Ryan Reynolds to say he’d be willing to star in the movie if it wasn’t too late, Reynolds and Levy met with Marvel’s Kevin Feige to discuss the film’s status.
One of their immediate concerns was not messing with the legacy of James Mangold’s “Logan,” which everyone felt, including Jackman, was perfect.
“Initially, we had a very loose idea of how we would bring Wolverine back in ways that don’t necessarily interact or interfere with Logan and that legacy,” Reynolds explained. “I know Kevin, like Shawn and I and Hugh, were all very concerned about that. We really needed to protect that and still allow us to tell the most full-throated Wolverine story we could ever imagine, which for us was just a huge nerve-wracking privilege.”
All’s well, and that ends well, I guess. “Deadpool & Wolverine” opens on July 26. Head over to Vanity Fair to read more on this excellent exchange between the three creatives.