“Deadpool & Wolverine” marks the third time screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have teamed with Ryan Reynolds to pen an outlandish and foul-mouthed script for a Deadpool movie.
Though every movie in the franchise has had its challenges, Reese and Wernick admit this one had the most twists and turns. First, they weren’t the original screenwriters. Wendy and Lizzie Molyneux (“Bob’s Burgers”) took a first stab, but when Marvel wanted to go another direction, Reynolds called his mates.
With Deadpool now a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Disney bought Fox — the studio that owned the franchise — Reese, Wernick, and Reynolds (Zeb Wells and director Shawn Levy also have screenwriting credits on the movie) had an embarrassment of riches at their disposal for a third movie. But while that led to a wealth of ideas, there were precious few they all felt could be turned into a full movie.
“We were a little paralyzed because Marvel made their entire universe our oyster, and we just couldn’t figure out what we wanted to do,” Reese said. “It had been four or five months. We had different stories, but we felt we were chasing our tail.”
To add more pressure, with a writers’ strike on the horizon, they began considering if it made more sense to pause the project until the labor dispute ended. But then Reynolds informed the team that Hugh Jackman had agreed to return to play Wolverine.
“Once Hugh came onboard the movie kind of wrote itself,” Wernick said. Now there was a path.
“It has to be a buddy movie; it has to be a two-hander. We didn’t want to use Logan because we were worried that we would dishonor his perfect ending, so then we knew we had to use a variant, so that brought in that whole idea,” Reese said. “Things rapidly fell together. I think once we made those decisions, I think within about a week, we had an outline.”
The result is another box office smash in the “Deadpool” franchise. The movie took in $211 million domestically its opening weekend, beating the first “Deadpool” to become the biggest opening ever for an R-rated movie. After passing the $500 million mark worldwide before even entering its second weekend in theaters, the movie is destined to be a $1 billion earner.
Below, Business Insider chatted with Reese and Wernick about some of the biggest spoilers and secrets in “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Ryan Reynolds did some of those *NSYNC moves in the “Bye Bye Bye” opening sequence.
In the movie’s opening, Deadpool slaughters a group of Time Variance Authority officers using the bones of Wolverine from the “Logan” movie while doing the full choreography from the hit *NSYNC 2000 single “Bye Bye Bye.”
Though Reynolds has gone on record praising the talents of dancer Nick Pauley, who did most of the dancing in the scene, Wernick said there are some shots of Reynolds in the suit doing the moves.
“I think he did some,” he said. “But I’ve seen Ryan dance, he does not dance as well as that dancer.”
An outline of how Marvel characters Johnny Storm, Elektra, Blade, and Gambit would fit in the movie was developed before asks went out to the actors.
One of the highlights of the movie is seeing Marvel characters pre-MCU get a final moment to shine.
When traveling through the Void, Deadpool and Wolverine come across Fantastic Four member Johnny Storm (aka Human Torch). He has a sudden demise, though he gets a glorious epilogue in the end-credits scene (more on that in a minute). But that turns out to be just an appetizer, as later in the movie, our heroes get help back to Earth from Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Blade (Wesley Snipes), and Gambit (Channing Tatum).
Reese said before asks went out to the actors, they put together an outline of how the characters would fit into the movie.
“It definitely starts from story; we come up with the idea up front and then approach the actor,” he said. They wait to fully write the scenes, though — that way, they don’t waste time on them if an actor turns down the invitation to appear.
Thankfully, Reese said convincing actors hasn’t been too difficult. “We do have the luxury of a pretty easy incoming call to make to an actor: ‘Do you want to be in ‘Deadpool’?”
The screenwriters had particular fun developing Gambit, as Tatum’s hopes of playing the character onscreen were seemingly dashed when the project was scrapped after the Disney/Fox merger.
“We’ve read at least two Gambit movies,” Wernick said. “Channing has been trying to push that ball up the hill as long as we’ve probably been trying to push Deadpool up the hill. Hopefully, this will allow him the opportunity to get his own movie. We just told Channing over at Comic Con we want to be the guys to write it.”
Chris Evans signed onto the movie largely because of the profanity-laced end-credits scene, which he cowrote with Reynolds.
Now back to Evans. According to the screenwriters, what really got Evans excited about his appearance in the movie wasn’t so much about playing Johnny Storm again (he played the character in the early 2000s “Fantastic Four” movies released by Fox) as it was about getting to go on a profanity-laced tirade in the end-credits scene.
In the movie, Storm dies at the hands of Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) after Deadpool tells her the names Storm called her on their ride to her fortress. The audience never sees Storm say those things, so it’s easy to believe Deadpool is lying.
The end-credits scene proves Deadpool was telling the truth. Using a tool from the TVA, Deadpool shows the audience footage inside the transport that sent Wolverine, Deadpool, and Storm to Nova, which includes Storm going on a full rant against Nova.
“That was Ryan’s idea and it was so great because I think it was really the reason Chris was willing to do the cameo,” Reese said. “Ryan wrote the stream of angry insults, and Chris pitched in a little bit.”
“I think it was just a way for him to do something that he’s never been able to do in a Marvel movie,” Wernick added.
Reynolds came up with the Hugh Jackman divorce joke.
Deadpool loves to get under people’s skin, and that includes spouting snarky one-liners. One of his most brutal ones is directed at Wolverine: “He’s usually shirtless, but he’s let himself go since the divorce.” It’s a cheeky reference to Hugh Jackman’s separation from his wife of 27 years, Deborra-Lee Furness.
Reese and Wernick want to make it clear that they don’t know Jackman well enough to write a joke like that.
“That was not ours,” Reese said. “We would never have presumed to write that line in a million years. That line comes as a function of Ryan and Hugh’s relationship and their comfort level.”
This isn’t the first time a movie they wrote features a revealing line that they didn’t write themselves.
In the 2009 movie “Zombieland,” after Bill Murray is shot, he’s asked if he has any regrets, and he responds: “‘Garfield,’ maybe,” referring to his role voicing the character in the 2004 box office bust. It turns out that was an improvised response.
“Bill Murray himself made fun of ‘Garfield’ when he improvised a reaction to a line we wrote for him,” Reese said. “We would have never presumed to do that — he did it. It’s all about the person’s comfort level and being willing to make fun of their own predicament and their own lives.”
Reynolds originally wanted Deadpool to fight zombies and Marvel villain Mephisto.
A major moment in the movie is the final fight sequence, when Deadpool and Wolverine face off against all the Deadpool variants who were in the Void, including Ladypool (voiced by Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively).
As Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” plays, Deadpool and Wolverine battle the seemingly endless onslaught of Deadpool variants in a long single shot, which is known in Hollywood as a “oner.”
The screenwriters said this sequence has been in Reynolds’ mind for years.
“When he picked up the phone for the first time on ‘Deadpool 3’ to reach out to us, I think it was late 2021, his original vision was zombies, that it was Deadpool in a oner battling zombies,” Reese said.
Also? The fight would take place in Hell.
“We had a fair amount of versions where it was like Deadpool goes to Hell, where this character Mephisto was our villain,” said Reese, referring to a character from the Marvel comics who oversees a version of Hell. “He would be fighting through these hellish demons to ‘Like a Prayer.'”
The Mephisto plot was eventually scrapped, but Reynolds’ quest to do a oner to “Like a Prayer” lived on.
“That was something living in his head,” Wernick said. “God bless him, he got it.”
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