The pairing of Deadpool and Wolverine in their own full-fledged action comedy always somehow felt inevitable—despite Wolverine’s grand send-off in Logan, Ryan Reynolds seemingly willed his re-teaming with Hugh Jackman into existence. But enthusiasm is only the first step, and in a new interview, the star and Marvel’s Kevin Feige discussed how they plotted the characters’ long-anticipated entrance into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Talking to Empire Magazine, Reynolds explained how Deadpool & Wolverine went through many, many different iterations. His first idea was a “Rashomon story about Wolverine and Deadpool … told from three completely different perspectives.” But Feige, who’d long been pondering how to bring the X-Men and mutants into the MCU, didn’t go for that idea. No matter, he added, because “Ryan is an idea machine. So he may have pitched that to me, but he also pitched 25 other thoughts and ideas.”
Reynolds gave a slightly smaller (but still over-the-top) number when describing the process of coming up with the right story for Deadpool & Wolverine. “I went back to the drawing board, and I wrote up about 18 different treatments … Some of them almost 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.”
Going by the trailers and what we’ve seen from the movie so far, it definitely looks like Deadpool & Wolverine will be as big as anything we’ve seen emerge from the MCU. But if there’s one thing Reynolds loves to do, it’s keep an audience on their toes. We’ll find out for sure when Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters July 26.
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