In an interview with GQ, Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds said that making the movie almost gave him “a little bit of a nervous breakdown.” Turns out, the most fun (and financially successful) R-rated movie of all time was an 11-year series of headaches for everyone involved.
Reynolds’ specific headaches began with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, where he played “this abomination of Deadpool” that he compares to Baraka from the Mortal Kombat franchise. Indeed, the original film concept for Deadpool tested so poorly that the end of X-Men Origins had to be reshot.
“I was such a d**che,” Reynolds says of his response to the reshoot. “I remember saying, ‘You know, there are more Deadpool fans out there than you realize, and they’re not gonna be happy with this.’”
But Reynolds, who had been lobbying to play Deadpool for years beforehand, wouldn’t quit. He wrote a script for a proper Deadpool film with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and after more battles with 20th Century Fox, made the film with director Tim Miller.
“Making the movie was very, very difficult,” Reynolds says, calling the team behind Deadpool “the most passionate group of individuals I’ve ever worked with in my life” while also admitting that “there were vaguely scary fights in the post-production process that escalated quickly.”
Tension kept mounting as the film was cut together. “Some people at the studio were still scratching their heads like, ‘What is this? Is this gonna go over like a lead zeppelin or is this gonna fly like the Goodyear blimp?’“, Reynolds says. He goes on to credit 20th Century Fox exec Emma Watts for cutting through the studio’s inertia prior to its release.
Reynolds also confirms that there will be a Deadpool 2 coming out in 2018, although Tim Miller will not be directing thanks to the “creative differences” from the first one.
Click here to read the full interview with GQ.
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
