Speaking to Creative Screenwritng, Deadpool screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick discussed those hilarious opening credits which listed the director as an "Overpaid Tool", the producers as 'Asshats' and the screenwriters as 'The Real Heroes'. Reese and Wernick tried to downplay those credits, saying it was just a bit of fun. "We came up with that actually. We just figured that it was a fun nod to the heartache as we’ve had on this thing over the last six and a half years. Screenwriters aren’t at the top of the food chain in the feature world. They often should be, but sometimes they take second billing. It was a fun, fun way for us to poke fun at the hierarchy. We had heroic moments for sure on this movie."
However, in recounting the gauntlet the Deadpool creative team had to undergo to get the film greenlit by 20th Century Fox, those tongue-in-cheek credits may hold a hint of truth. Speaking to io9 in a separate interview, Reese and Wernick revealed that Fox gave the writer duo and Tim Miller 48 hrs to slash the film's budget by $7 million or the project wasn't moving forward. "We had to carve something like $7-8 million out of the budget in a 48-hour window. And we, as a group, just put our heads together, got creative, and said ‘How do we cut what is essentially nine pages out of a 110 page script?"
Luckily, Miller, Reese and Wernick were able to accomplish the feat by using Gina Carano's character, Angel Dust to fill the henchman role originally intended to be filed by three Marvel characters, Garrison Kane, Sluggo and Wire. They also cut a motorcycle chase scene between Ajax and Deadpool in the opening credits, allowing Ajax to simply slip away when heads were turned. The other big cut was having Deadpool forget his guns on the way to the opening battle on the freeway and the climatic battle on the helicarrier battleship.