Ryan Reynolds is flying high on the success of the new Deadpool film, but the road to it's release proved to be long and difficult. What's more, he was pressured into playing a less-than-faithful version of the Merc with a Mouth.
During a Talks at Google presentation, the actor revealed there was an agreement with 20th Century Fox producers for his character Wade Wilson/Deadpool to get a solo movie in exchange for appearing in X-Men Origins Wolverine. However, the end result was a far cry from what comic book fans had been expecting. "They sew his mouth shut, let lasers come out of his eyes," Reynolds says. "He was weird knives that fly out of his hands." Furthermore, the character was depicted as being the result of an experiment combining various mutants' powers together, such as Cyclops' optic blasts and Wolverine's healing factor.
This version of Deadpool is controversial among fans, who have dubbed him "Barakapool" in reference to the popular Mortal Kombat character. Reynolds attempted to warn Fox about the deviations from the source material but was unsucessful. "I remember saying, 'That's really going to anger some people. That's not Deadpool'," he says. "And they basically said, 'Well, you can play him or we can hire someone else to play him.' So for me, it was... I was a little bit blackmailed."
Reynolds also revealed that the 2007-2008 writer's strike caused a problem during X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Due to the strike, the producers rushed the film into production, and Reynolds ended up writing or adlibbing most of Wade Wilson's dialogue during the early scenes of the movie.
Based upon Marvel Comics’ most unconventional anti-hero, DEADPOOL tells the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, who after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.
Release: February 12, 2016
Director: Tim Miller
Screenplay by: Paul Wernick & Rhett Reese
Producers: Simon Kinberg, Lauren Shuler Donner, Ryan Reynolds
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano, Brianna Hildebrand