Had Disney not acquired 20th Century Fox, it's likely we'd have already sat down in theaters to watch Deadpool 3 by now. Very little has been revealed about what the original version of the movie was, though we've heard Ryan Reynolds always wanted Hugh Jackman to return.
With Marvel Studios calling the shots, the Merc with the Mouth will now take centre stage in an epic Multiversal blockbuster. And yes, Wolverine will be by his side (this time in a comic-accurate costume).
Talking to Empire Online, Reynolds reveals that he originally pictured Deadpool 3 as a "Rashomon story about Wolverine and Deadpool and something that they got into together, but told from three completely different perspectives." He'd add, "It was a way to make a large-scale movie in a very small way."
We'd assume those perspectives were Deadpool, Wolverine, and a third mystery character, but when Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige heard the pitch...he wasn't sold!
"The truth is, I wasn’t even sure how to incorporate Deadpool yet," the executive admits. "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 says, "I went back to the drawing board, and I wrote up about 18 different treatments. Some of them almost. t 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."
Ultimately, they cracked the version of Deadpool & Wolverine we'll see in theaters this summer. According to executive producer Wendy Jacobson, "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."
Those road trip elements appear to have made their way into the movie, albeit with the title characters travelling through the Multiverse. Crucially, despite tying into the MCU's current saga, the threequel will be R-Rated, a first for Marvel Studios.
Shawn Levy directs Deadpool & Wolverine, which stars Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, and Matthew Macfadyen. The movie is written by Ryan Reynolds & Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick & Zeb Wells & Shawn Levy.
Deadpool & Wolverine arrives in theaters on July 26.