MTV News' Rick Marshall managed to score a Q&A session with Rob Liefeld, who notably created Marvel's "merc with a mouth" Deadpool. And last week, the veteran comic creator also infamously called out the studio currently managing the character's live-action Ryan Reynolds-starrer adaption, 20th Century Fox. Using this interview further bashing the studio, Liefeld speaks in-depth why he thinks we haven't seen any movement on the film lately, and why we should.
So... Rob... read any good blogs about what somebody said on Twitter lately?
[Lol] Well, what I believe is, if you're talking on Twitter, you're talking out loud — but sometimes you go, "Really? This is news?"
So let's get right to it. What's going on — or not going on — with "Deadpool" these days?
With the "Deadpool" film, it really boils down to to this: all the ingredients are there. What's the wait? I watch everything just like you do. You cover this business, and so do I as an interested party and a fan and somebody who has other films going. You look at development slates and what's going forward. You know how many people would kill to have Ryan Reynolds star in their movie?
You mentioned on Twitter that you'd read the "Deadpool" script and loved it...
You know what they say about "if it's not on the page, it's not on the screen"? Well, it's all there on the page. That script is brilliant. It doesn't need any adjusting, it doesn't need any vetting, it's just brilliant. It's like nothing else that's out there. Anyone who's read it knows that this is the comics film we've been waiting for. It has all the action, the violence, and the unexpected original set pieces that you haven't seen but want to see. It has character, it has heart, and it's laugh-out-loud funny. So you can't help asking, what's the holdup here? Is "Deadpool" not on the priority list? I really do not think they understand what they have here.
Is it because Deadpool was such an unknown commodity in the mainstream world before "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"? Why is there such a holdup?
"I go to the conventions and travel the country every year and I'm deluged with people dressed as Deadpool — people who are dying for this. These people have created such a phenomenon that Marvel has five or six "Deadpool" books a month. I want to say, "Hey Fox, last I counted, that's more than Spider-Man!"
It's not like I don't live in southern California and have management and agents in this town. It's not like I don't hear things around town. If it's an issue of Fox being cheap, what's that about? Open up the pocketbooks. Between a smaller budget and a bigger budget, they might want to go bigger budget — history will tell you that. They should spend what they need to get a director and lock down the star. They have Ryan Reynolds and Reese and Wernick, who if you haven't noticed, are tearing up the town. There's a reason everybody wants them. Fox has the script that everybody thinks is their best piece of work.
Well, it seems like you're not finding much argument with what you said on Twitter. People want this "Deadpool" movie to happen, and everyone seems to like Reynolds, Reese, and Wernick on it...
It's like this: If you have a voice and you do nothing with it, then you only have yourself to blame. I go to these conventions and my signature on a "Deadpool" book makes it go up an obscene amount of value, so I'm partially saddled with this situation, too. "Hey Liefeld, when's 'Deadpool' coming out?!" You know how often I'm asked that? But I don't have a green light on this...
I know the producers are awesome — the Donner people are great people. They have assembled a perfect storm, so let's go! Ryan Reynolds is amazingly bankable. Women love him, men love him. ... He has the Will Smith / Tom Cruise bankability, and you don't even need to ask him to star in the movie — he's already committed! He's a producer!
If you think things were heating up nicely, check out the full, second half of the interview over at
MTV News, where Liefeld praises Ryan Reynolds and his commitment to the film and more. In the meantime, what do you think?