Ryan Reynolds Reveals His Rejected Deadpool 3 Movie Pitches
Before Ryan Reynolds settled on the idea to make Deadpool and Wolverine a team-up film with those two main characters, the actor pitched numerous other ideas that never got off the ground. Reynolds told Empire that one of his first ideas was to create a Rashomon-style movie about Deadpool and Wolverine about an adventure the pair shared, but told from “three completely different perspectives.”
Marvel boss Kevin Feige, however, said no, in part because he himself wasn’t sure what the best approach would be for Deadpool as a Disney property following the company’s acquisition of the character. “The truth is, I wasn’t even sure how to incorporate Deadpool yet,” Feige said. “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.”
Rashomon, a 1950 film from legendary director Akira Kurosawa, told its story from multiple perspectives, and Reynolds was thinking of something similar originally for the next Deadpool film. That was one of more than a dozen thoughts and ideas that Reynolds brought to the table.
“I went back to the drawing board, and I wrote up about 18 different treatments,” Reynolds said.
Another idea was to make a movie in the vein of a film that had a relatively small budget of under $10 million, not unlike a film that might make it into Sundance, Reynolds said. “Sort of using the IP in a way that they previously hadn’t used,” he said.
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.”
Deadpool and Wolverine releases this July in theaters, and it is Marvel’s one and only film for 2024. It’s directed by Shawn Levy and features a long list of cameos, including potentially Taylor Swift as Dazzler.
