Deadpool & Wolverine is coming soon
The next Deadpool movie is not Deadpool 3 but instead a team-up called Deadpool & Wolverine starring both Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. The film releases on July 26, and it’s expected to be a box office smash given how much build-up and hype there is surrounding it.
Entertainment Weekly recently spoke to Reynolds, Jackman, director Shawn Levy, and others involved in the movie. It’s a great read and you should go check it out.
In this gallery, we’re rounding up five things we learned from the feature article that caught our eye, including new information about Emma Corrin’s villain character, the 18 different pitches that Reynolds came up with, the so-called superhero fatigue phenomenon, and more.
Superhero fatigue?
A lot has been said about so-called superhero fatigue being responsible for some of Disney and Marvel’s latest films coming up short at the box office. Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy agreed that Marvel might have lost some of its Midas touch, but anyone declaring the death of superhero movies may be proven wrong.
“Marvel had some misses,” he admitting, going on to say, “people are way too quick to declare the last rites of the superhero genre. I don’t buy into that fatigue narrative.”
For what it’s worth, Disney CEO Bob Iger doesn’t buy into that either. He said Disney simply needs to make better movies that convince people to go see them.
A rare sequel for Levy
Levy doesn’t often make sequels (though his Night at the Museum series is an exception), so what drew him in to make the latest entry in an established series with Deadpool & Wolverine?
He said the story for Deadpool & Wolverine won him over. As it happens, though, everyone involved in the film is staying mum on what the actual narrative is.
“I get offered some IP-based movie every week, and, as you’ve noticed from a lack of announcements, I pretty much always turn them down because I need to feel that I see a story worth telling,” he said.
Levy came close to directing The Flash starring Ezra Miller, he said, but it never came together.
Deadpool & Wolverine may not be Levy’s last superhero film, though, as he’s rumored to be the top choice for The Avengers 5.
Emma Corrin’s villain
Deadpool & Wolverine will see the title characters facing off against a villain, Cassandra Nova, portrayed by The Crown’s Emma Corrin.
Corrin explained that Nova is not your typical pure-evil villain; she’s more layered and nuanced.
“Ryan and Shawn pitched this idea, which I was totally on board with: ‘We want this villain to not be a villain in the sense that you expect them to be. We want you to be so endeared by her, so charmed by her, and just when you think that maybe she’s totally seen into your soul and you are going to be best friends for life, you’re dead,'” Corrin said.
Corrin went on to say that the filmmakers wanted Nova to be “unpredictable,” not unlike Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka character. Corrin also mentioned how Nova aims to be similar to Christoph Waltz’s villain from Inglourious Basterds in that the character is “disarmingly polite and nice and unaffected.” This creates a “really creepy” kind of villain, Corrin said.
Reynolds had many ideas
Before settling on having the third Deadpool movie be a team-up with Deadpool and Wolverine, Reynolds said he pitched Marvel boss Kevin Feige on about 18 different ideas. One was “a Rashomon story that had these three different points of view,” he said.
Perhaps the most out-there concept was to make a low-budget indie-style film for only $6 million and with no special effects.
“It was just a talkie-talkie road trip with me and [Karan Soni’s character] Dopinder and some of the things we collected and saw along the way. It wasn’t meant to be an event movie. If we’re on our way to Point C, it was meant to just get us to Point B. That was the weirdest one. I liked it. I thought it was kind of fun,” Reynolds said.
In a previous interview, Reynolds said he also pitched “bigger” ideas and concepts that fell between small- and large-scale.
Executive producer Wendy Jacobson said the creative team took its time coming up with the best idea, and once Hugh Jackman signed on to come back as Wolverine, the process took off.
“We definitely spun our wheels a little bit trying to find the reason for this movie to be,” Jacobson said. “Once Hugh raised his hand, two months later we were prepping. It was honestly one of the fastest turnarounds I’ve ever seen.”
Reynolds could have hung it up
One of the most shocking revelations from the feature is that, after Disney’s acquisition of the Deadpool franchise in its buyout of many of Fox’s entertainment assets, he wondered if he would ever get the chance to play the Merc with a mouth again.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever be playing Deadpool again,” Reynolds said. “It’s not something I would’ve said necessarily publicly, but I didn’t know how a character like that would fit into that world [of the MCU].”
Feige also noted that there was a lot of behind-the-scenes details that had to be worked out, legally speaking, before characters like Deadpool and Wolverine could appear in an MCU film.
“I don’t want to get into corporate acquisition legal laws or whatever. I don’t understand them, but there’s a lot of ’em,” Feige said. “It took a long time between whenever [the acquisition] was announced to it all getting done, so [the characters] weren’t really in our sandbox for a very long time after that first announcement happened.”
Feige went on to say that it’s a “pretty amazing quarter-of-a-century experience” for Deadpool and Wolverine to be under the same roof together.