WHAT WENT WRONG - Deadpool

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

How did Ryan Reynolds go from fans’ biggest disappointment to the Deadpool of their dreams? In this episode Chris and Lizzie explore the long road ‘Deadpool’ (2016) took to get to the screen, why a first time feature director was the best man for the job, and how a mysterious leak actually saved the film. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ryan Reynolds is Deadpool. Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies, and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one. They are all miracles. And today, Lizzie, I'm imagining we're discussing a movie that is a bit of a miracle based on a few iterations of the character I've seen over the years. Oh, yes.

So, as always, I'm Chris Winterbauer. I'm joined by your co-host, my co-host. The People's Co-host. Intrepid researcher, Lizzie Bassett, The People's Co-host. Lizzie, what are we talking about today? Well, since Deadpool and Wolverine comes out this week, we thought it was high time to cover the first Deadpool film,

though, as Chris pointed out, not the first time Deadpool appears in a live-action film, which we will get to. I also want to put a warning up top. We're going to spend a lot of this episode in pre-production, but I promise it's a wild ride. But, yeah, I can't believe how hard this movie was to make. It feels like a complete no-brainer, and yet it was not.

I don't know a ton about the development of Deadpool, but I do remember hearing a little bit when it came out. It obviously came out at a very interesting point in Ryan Reynolds' career and in the arc of the superhero resurgence or golden era, specifically the X-Men side of things as opposed to the Marvel Studios side of things. So I'm very curious. I would argue the opposite, kind of, just because I feel like this was sort of when Marble is really getting into the massive swing of the MCU. No, no, exactly. I agree. Marble's in its big upswing, just as X-Men, you could argue, has taken a fall from grace.

X-Men was having a tough time. Exactly. Had you seen Deadpool before? Yes, I saw Deadpool. When it came out, I didn't remember it terribly well. rewashed it with my wife last night. I will preface this by saying, this is not my genre. Sure.

And I don't necessarily specifically mean superhero movies. I've enjoyed a number of them and haven't enjoyed, you know, others. I guess what I mean is more specifically the ultra self-referential meta-narrative. Just not 100% my cup of tea completely respect the right of the artist to include the frame as part of the painting. but I had a harder time rewatching this for some reason I feel like in 2024 than I did in 2016. Maybe it felt more revolutionary at the time than it does upon rewatching it. Not that I didn't appreciate everything they accomplished and it's a really well-made movie. Very fun.

But I didn't quite hold up for me overall in the way I expected it to. Yeah, I kind of had the opposite experience. I really enjoyed it. I did not see it when it came out in 2016. I was more familiar with the behind-the-scenes story of how it got made, which is why I wanted to cover this. But I liked it. Like, it's, I agree with you that there's a lot, which we'll get to. And that is like integral to the character of Deadpool from the very beginning in the comics.

So, you know, they did exactly what they were supposed to do with this movie. But it's also just like, it's, it is like machine gunfire of jokes just coming out. you constantly. And, you know, not all of them hit. A lot of them do. So I almost didn't mind it. It's like, it's a lot. It's not something I would like watch frequently, but I really enjoyed it, especially understanding the story of how they got it made. So for all you listeners, if you're not sure if you want to watch Deadpool, listen to this episode. I think you'll have a fun time watching it after this, but also it's just fun anyway. And I also think we're going to come away with a lot of respect for Canadian treasure Ryan Reynolds after this.

Mint Mobile, telecom. Did he so rich? He's so rich. He's so rich. Gillionaire. Yeah. He is. Well, I mean, I think as you're going to see through this, he is an extremely savvy

businessman. He's an executive moonlighting as an actor. Yeah. I think at this point. Yeah. You know, he's so successful on the business side of things. God, I wish I was that rich. But also, I don't want to work as hard as this man does.

I'll tell you that. No. He doesn't sound fun. He does not sleep. Okay, so we'll start with the basic info. Deadpool is directed by Tim Miller, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The release date was February 12th of 2016, released by 20th Century Fox, among others. Starring, of course, Ryan Reynolds, T.J. Miller, Marina Baccaran, Ed Skrine, Gina Carrano, Leslie Uggams, and more. As always, the synopsis, according to IMDB, is a wisely cracking mercenary gets experimented on and becomes immortal yet hideously scarred and sets out to

track down the man who ruined his looks. Yeah. That's kind of the whole movie. I think ultimately part of my not issue, but why I had a harder time locking in, I suppose, is superhero films are, I think, even fans would admit by their very nature a silly genre that requires a pretty big suspension of disbelief to kind of lock into the stakes at play, which I've done many a time,

Sam Ramey's Spider-Man movies. The first two, especially, are among my favorites. And I think that when you take that silliness, grab it by the throat, strangle it in front of your audience, while winking at them. It's really funny. It is funny.

But then you realize there are perhaps no stakes left after you've killed them in such a way. And that's where I guess I found myself midway through or so thinking, wait, what's the goal at the end of this movie? I couldn't quite remember. Well, I would argue that it becomes not a rom-com, but a romantic film in the latter half of it, which is an interesting choice for this character. And perhaps it doesn't even matter, because like you said, Lizzie, it's very entertaining and the jokes per minute are very high. There's so many. There's just arguably too many.

but that's okay. So as far as I can tell, Deadpool is part of the Marvel universe, though is not officially part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I think, until Deadpool and Wolverine. He's also not officially part of the X-Men, though he is clearly within the X-Men universe. Hmm. Deadpool, aka Wade Wilson, first appeared in an issue of new mutants in February of 1991. Side note, 1991. Also the year of Ryan Reynolds' first ever acting credit on Canadian television. A show called 15 coincidence. I don't think so. This is just going to become a conspiracy theory.

My middle is Deadpool. So for the next six years, Deadpool bopped around Marvel Comics as a recurring character morphing from villain at his onset to asshole anti-hero. Okay. During this time, he got a couple of his own miniseries, but it wasn't until 1997 that Deadpool gets his own titular ongoing comic. And this is where the Deadpool that we see on screen really starts to materialize. He's funny.

He's very self-aware, very much an anti-hero. It's also from this point forward, it is a send-up of the super serious superhero world. Got it. Also in Deadpool number 28, he does something very important for the first time. He breaks the fourth wall. Ah, I was wondering. So from that early in the comics, he is talking right to the audience, and he's aware of what he is and of what he's in.

So as you can probably tell, the Deadpool that we see on screen in this movie is extremely faithful to the character that's written on the page. Got it. In May of 2000, Artisan Entertainment announces it's made a deal with Marvel Enterprises for at least 15 live-action superhero franchises. Now, this was a fun list.

Among the titles on this list are Captain America, Thor, Thor, Black Panther, Makes sense. Ant-man. We've got Morbius. Boo. No, it's Mormon time.

Morbin time. And then we also have my favorite, Mort the Dead Teenager. That sounds great. So waiting for that one. It does sound good. I would love to watch that. Quick, Chris, reboot Mort the Dead Teenager. Sounds awesome.

And, of course, on this list also was Deadpool. Got it. Now, if you're not familiar with Artisan Entertainment, it's probably because they are no more, but they were one of the biggest. mini-major studios. Chris, could you briefly explain what a mini-major is? Sure. So, broadly speaking, and this should be directionally correct, but excuse the errant detail or two, the mini-major studios are smaller than the major studios. And remember,

the majors were originally Paramount, Warner Brothers, RKO, MGM, and 20th Century Fox. Those were the big five. And they had the little three, Universal, United Artists, and Columbia. Disney was not considered a major studio, I don't think, until the 80s. Anywho, the mini-major. The mini-major, are still big enough to finance and distribute their own films. These movies are, again, on average, lower budget and also perhaps riskier projects that majors might not be willing to make. These many major companies are often privately or semi-privately owned as opposed to the publicly traded studios. And a lot of them were actually bought up or consolidated into the major studios toward the end of the 20th century. For example, New Line Cinema was eventually rolled

into Warner Brothers. Mirror Max was swallowed up by Disney, etc. Current mini-majors would include Lionsgate, STX, and A-24. And yes, I do know that Lionsgate is now a publicly traded company, but that's new as of this year. Some of Artisan Entertainment's hits included the Blair Witch Project. I think they're actively now in a suit with the actors of Blair Witch over residuals. There is something going on, yeah. Requium for a dream. and National Lampoons fan Wilder, starring Ryan Reynolds. It's funny you should mention Lionsgate because around 2003, Artisan Entertainment gets bought out by Lionsgate.

Oh, interesting. It seems like the Deadpool Project may have been a bit of a casualty of this. I couldn't really figure out what happened, but it kind of floats on. However, by February of 2004, Deadpool has found a new home. Screenwriter David S. Goyer announces that he's working with new lines, cinema to get the rights to Deadpool. And who does he want a star in it? Ryan Reynolds.

Really? That early. Yes. Wow. 2004. Well, here's why. You probably already know why. Blade Trinity?

Yes. So it makes perfect sense because that exact same year, Ryan Reynolds' abs and arms, blew everyone's collective minds in Blade Trinity, which was written by David S. Goyer. And I've heard that they had to C.G.I. Wesley Snipes's eyes open or closed for a scene because he refused to open his eyes.

All right. Which that's hearsay. I just mentioned it because it's funny. But the first two blades were super successful. I think this one did quite well as well. Yeah, I think commercially it did. And obviously you had the Spider-Man films. And then this was right around the time of Batman begins.

So you have a lot of these dark brooding, you know, superhero movies coming out. Yes. And also, David S. Goyer wrote the Dark Night trilogy. Oh. So, Chris, have you seen Blade Trinity? I have. All right. The only person buffer than Ryan Reynolds is Jessica Beale in that movie.

That's true. She's jacked. She's jacked. She's jacked. But yes. Yeah. I adore that movie. It is a mess.

It's really fun and it's a mess. And I really liked it. Well, if listeners, if you haven't seen it, in it, Ryan Reynolds plays Hannibal King, a quippy smart-mouth vampire hunter who frequently uses humor to deflect during fight sequence. sound familiar. Mm-hmm. So, yes, it is basically proto-Deadpool in many ways. He's got a great goatee, I believe, if I'm remembering correctly.

He's got a really nice beard, which continues on through Amityville Horror. Listen, this whole episode doesn't have to be about how hot Ryan Reynolds is in the early 2000s, but it could be. Smoke show. Yes, he's beautiful. In fact, it was such an obvious fit that an executive on set actually handed Ryan a stack of Deadpool comics and said that he should read them because he was, quote, essentially playing this guy anyway, and maybe he should play him for real. And then he opened the page where he looks like a human testicle and said, hey, what the hell?

Well, and Blade is, of course, also within the Marvel universe. So why hasn't he joined the MCU yet? That would be fun. No, he's on his way. They've got Mahershala Ali locked in. They've lost the director three times in a row. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's been in development since like 2019. They just lost another director. I don't know what's going on. Just bring back Wesley Snipes. He's great. He was all of these, too. Anyway, now something else happens in 2004.

You mentioned Ryan Reynolds opening the pages of Deadpool and seeing that he looks like a shriveled up testicle. Well, in issue number two of cable in Deadpool, Deadpool actually describes himself as looking like, quote, a Sharpay crossed with Ryan Reynolds. Oh. I mean, the synergy. And Ryan Reynolds discovered branding in that moment.

Yeah. And the rest was history. So it seems like the project does start to languish in development hell sometime after 2004. It's possibly because of a rights issue. According to an executive who was at New Line Cinema for Blade Trinity, it sounds like initially they thought that Deadpool wasn't technically part of the X-Men franchise, so they would have been able to develop the character, but that ended up being incorrect. And it turns out that 20th Century Fox did hold the rights at this point to Deadpool.

Right. And 20th Century is milking X-Men at this point. Big time. They'd done X-Men, X-2, Brett Ratner was absolutely destroying and ruining the franchise with whatever the third one was. I think it's X-3, one last movie before cancellation from Bretner-Ratner. Yeah, I just didn't enjoy it as much as the, no, the Brian Singer did the first two, so what am I saying? I know, but they're good. Everyone was canceled. They're good, though.

They're really good. They're really good movies. But good news for Ryan. And in 2005, he found out that 20th Century Fox was now on board with a Deadpool feature, and they still wanted him to play the mark with the mouth. Now, I don't know if you remember this time in Ryan Reynolds' career. It sounds like you do, and you followed it as closely as I did. Oh, yeah. But it was a huge turning point from Blade Trinity forward.

This is like, I would equate this to, you know, Chris Pratt's Andy Dwyer transformation into Zero Dark 30 before Chris Pat ever even hit a gym. This is long before that. Reynolds had been known pretty much purely for comedy before now, you know, two guys, a girl in a pizza place. I love that show. Van Wilder. When did he do Just Friends? Wait, we're getting there. So after Blade, he rolls right into Amityville Horror, which I know is technically not good, but I love it. Yeah.

Love it. And then follows it up with a mix of comedy action and rom-coms, including Waiting, Just Friends, my favorite. I love that movie. Smoke and Aces, definitely maybe. And so many more. Ryan Mennel's doesn't sleep. I really enjoy definitely maybe.

It's cute. I thought it was a cute movie. And Smokin Aces is one of those movies that is a tire fire, and yet I watch the action scenes on YouTube quite often. Wow. Yeah, also great Chris Pine early role as one of the... Chris Pine murders Ben Affleck in the first five minutes of that movie. What? It's so weird.

Great. Continue. Okay. My favorite celebrity Chris, so I need to watch that. So upon finding out that Fox was still on board with him as Deadpool, Reynolds said at the time, quote, I would love to play that role. The Merck with a mouth. It's like the reason I stepped out of my mother to play that role. So someday, hopefully. Sidebar, walking at zero months. That's right. Just stepped out of the womb. It's disgusting, honestly, to think about. Please don't. Unfortunately for us all, Ryan Reynolds is about to get his wish. Just not the way that anyone wanted. Oh, no. I know. So at the same time as this is all going down, David Benioff, yes, of Game of Thrones fame,

is hired to write an origin story for breakout X-Men star Wolverine, aka Hugh Jackman. Eventually, Skip Woods would also be brought on, but we're not going to talk about this movie that much. So, Goyer had fallen off of the Deadpool bandwagon at some point to focus on a blade spin-off that never materialized, and also I would have to imagine he got pretty busy with the Dark Knight trilogy once that was going. So, of course, Chris, you know what's coming. Now we have to talk about 2009's X-Men Origins Wolverine. Wolverine. Have you seen this movie?

X-Dash-Men Origins, colon, Wolverine. Yeah, of course I've seen this movie. I was, I remain, look, as much as I want to say I'm above superhero movies, I love Wolverine. Every guy loves Wolverine and most women, I'm sure. And Hugh Jackman's great. I thought Logan was a masterpiece. And X-Men Origins is a goofy. It's a fun time if you go in with the right attitude.

I agree. I re-watched it for this episode, and I got to tell you, I didn't hate it. I know it makes no sense. It's very slapsticky. It's like very broad in a lot of ways. It's high camp in many, many ways. Yeah. But it pissed a lot of people off.

Because totally it didn't make sense at that moment that it was released. This is, I mean, Dark Night was two years earlier. This is like, this is going to be Hugh Jackman's brooding. They wanted Logan 10 years before Logan. Right. It doesn't happen. You end up with an absolutely bonkers mishmash. It is so weird.

Will I Am is just not acting. I loved it. I loved it. It's very much of its time. Listen, it's also like 90 minutes. long. So if you want something to watch, it's streaming on Max right now. I'm sure we're going to get a lot of shit for this because everyone hates this movie. I will say Gambit is terrible, and I am a Taylor Kitch fan. So that was pretty bad. His accent.

Tadaleu, you got to buy, girl. Not even. He would forget it halfway through and it would just Tim Riggins stop. I also, I just have to say, I love the opening credit sequence where they're like fighting through all the wars. Yes. I wish it was set to South Park's fight around the world. They're like conveniently always on the right side, I believe, as well. Yes, for the most part they are until Leav Schreiber turns evil. But yes, of course, one of the biggest complaints about this movie is the portrayal of Deadpool, which is bad. It is one of the worst parts of this movie.

It doesn't make any sense. So it seems like Ryan Reynolds knew from very early on that the way Deadpool was set to be portrayed was not going to make fans happy. But he was told that essentially he had no choice. Reynolds says the studio told him, if you want to play Deadpool, this is your chance to introduce him.

And if you don't want to introduce him in this fashion, we will have someone else play him. So he either loses the character, right, because this is the cinematic universe era. And although, you know, Ruffalo was recast over Norton, for example, and

yeah, but you can't count on that. You can't count on that. Or Terrence Howard's stepping away from Iron Man, for example. But those were exceptions to the rules. Also, the demand for Deadpool when this movie came out was actually pretty high. It's not like he had faded away. The fan base was growing with Wade Wilson popping up across a bunch of titles at the time. So, Chris, why do you think they brought Deadpool into this movie at all instead of doing, you know, a standalone Deadpool movie, which was the initial plan?

I would have to imagine some sort of, it's either her financial decision or X-Men Origins was going to be 72 pages and they needed one more character. So they brought them in. I don't know. Well, they liked the name. As Miranda Priestley would say, that's all. They just liked having the name Deadpool in the cast list? Sure did. Hey, guys, can we get another name on the call sheet?

Deadpool. Got it. All right. So here are all the differences. Yeah, this was a rough time. This was a rough time for the studio. This was a rough time for Ryan Reynolds. So here's all the differences in how Deadpool is portrayed in this movie versus how he appears in the comics. He has no suit.

Instead, he's in. I know. He's like a weird, half-naked shaved baby. Yeah, in really unattractive, like, eggplant purple scrubs is the bottom half of his outfit. And athletic tape. Like across his body. Yes. Mia Jovovich, Fifth Element style.

And blades for arms. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You mentioned the blades for arms. So he doesn't have his standard katanas. Instead, he has... It feels like a five-year-old design. Yes.

He has creepy, disgusting, retractable arm blades. And they're way too long, by the way. They're way too long. Which makes no sense. They go out like 8 feet. It doesn't make any sense given his elbows and also the rest of his internal organs. The poor special effects house that he has. handled Deadpool's look tried to explain that to Fox executives who allegedly said, quote,

well, that doesn't look cool. Make it longer. Make it longer. Right, because the answer is more sword when this is the problem. It's not, maybe don't change the entire character, but whatever. He also has laser eyes, which is one of the dumbest parts of this whole movie when he takes down the Three Mile Island. Oh, that's right. I forgot he has laser eyes like Cyclops. He has like. like Cyclops Laser Eyes. Because they basically make him a pastiche of all the other... I think that's the idea.

Superheroes. Yes. Which would explain the retractable giant swords. Giant swords. But yes, he does manage to take down the entire Three Mile Island nuclear reactor with his laser eyes, which is amazing. And he can teleport. Although it's worth noting, Deadpool does actually teleport across the comics, but he does

so with different devices procured by Weasel. As far as I understand, it's not one of his sort of mutant skills. Got it. Except in an alternate universe. Anyway, I have no business trying to entangle this comic. I'm going to stop at this point. And, of course, the big one, he has no mouth. They took the murk with a mouth and made him the murk without a mouth,

and then had Wolverine make a cheesy joke about it. The logic? Apparently, they thought it was cheesy for him to talk during fights. So they'll just sew his mouth shut. Yeah. Problem solved. Yeah. I can't imagine going through that.

make-up process and looking down at the comic on your tabletop and just thinking to yourself. Yeah. It's not like we didn't have reference material for this character. They did plan to give Deadpool his own movie eventually and didn't want to give too much away in this one, which is, I guess, why they didn't reveal anything true to the comics. It doesn't make any sense. Right. The movie is a mess, as we discussed, although we both agree, kind of a fun mess.

and we're not going to dwell on it too much, but suffices to say, fans were really pissed. Also, Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds were vocally not happy about the way that it turned out. One sort of fun part of this, though, is that it was during the writer's strike,

so Reynolds had to basically write most of the Wade Wilson dialogue at the beginning of the movie himself. He has some really funny lines in there that do feel very Deadpool. Now, just four days after Origins premiered on May 1st, Fox already announces that the Deadpool spin-off is in the works, but what was really interesting about this announcement is that they're

already distancing themselves from the portrayal of Wade Wilson in X-Men Origins Wolverine. According to the Hollywood reporter, he will regain the ability to mouth off and would, quote, go back to the roots of the character known for his slapstick tone and propensity to break the fourth wall. So immediately, I think they knew that they had made a huge mistake. It also mentions that they're currently out to writers. And less than a year later, zombie land writers, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are hired to write the film. I love Zambiland. And that is, tonally, that makes a tonal of sense for this.

In late 2010, Reese and Wernick's draft of the Deadpool screenplay leaks, the first of multiple leaks today. And fans are liking what they're seeing. One Reddit thread opens with, quote, literally amazing, makes up for origins, even makes fun of it. Which is true, and of course makes it to the final cut. But there are some key differences in this screenplay that do not. make the final film. So apparently the first pitch Reese and Wernick brought to Reynolds was just a regular Deadpool adventure story, but Reynolds was insistent that it should be at least part origin story as well. I think he wanted to redo. X-Men Origins, Wolverine Origins Deadpool. Yeah. Let's just

take a little magic eraser to that. Yeah. The opening scene originally featured Deadpool being released from a Supermax prison. It did not feature Negasonic Teenage Warhead or Angel Dust. In the final film, the pizza man, towards the beginning, is revealed to have been a stalker. In the original script, it's implied that he sexually assaulted the woman who hired Deadpool. And Deadpool's also a lot more violent. Instead of letting the pizza guy off with a warning, he smashes his teeth out. There's something weird in here as well, where Amy Winehouse almost dies several times across the movie. I don't love this. This was, of course, during the time when it was, like, funny to make fun of her, and obviously prior to her actual death, but sort of a weird feature of this original

screenplay. Deadpool pays Vanessa after they have sex, as she is still a sex worker. I mean, he still owes her $275. That's right. So as you can see, it's a much darker Deadpool than what we get at the end. Also, Ajax, played by Ed Skrine eventually, has three henchmen, not one. Garrison Kane, Sluggo, and Wire. But more on that in a little bit. And finally, the big one, the ending was different. It left the door open to the possibility that Deadpool's scars could potentially still be cured. A character named Dr. Killebrew, who comic book fans are, I'm sure, very familiar with, would have been revealed at the end of the movie as the doctor behind Deadpool's operation.

Killebrew would have clearly still been alive, leaving the door open in a sequel for Deadpool to track him down and find his cure. So they've got a working script that at the very least Ryan Reynolds is excited about, and now they need a director. Some names initially considered, and in some cases it said offered, include Robert Rodriguez. Could have been interesting. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, desperado's tonally not too far, Sin City, you got to think. Spy kids, darkly violent. No, but that, you know, he comes from that, you know, Tarantino 90s era of wisecracking action.

Totally. There was also a Swedish director named Adam Berg who popped up but didn't end up getting it. But eventually they would land on a somewhat unusual choice, Tim Miller. At almost 50, he had never directed a feature film before. Tim Miller caught the eye of a Fox executive thanks to a cinematic short he'd made for the DC Universe online game, featuring many of DC's biggest heroes and villains duking it out. They sent him the script, which he loved, and he agreed to start jumping through the necessary hurdles to win the job.

Worth noting, Tim Miller may be a first-time feature director, but he is in no way a rookie. He owned his own VFX company, Blur Studio, and was an absolute expert in VFX and animation. He had also previously worked on Scott Pilgrim versus the World, Daredevil, and Brian Singer's X-Men movies. And he'd been nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Short. So, in many ways, probably more qualified than some of the other people that they were looking at.

Absolutely. You know, it reminds me of John Wick. Yeah, Chadstahalski. Getting behind the camera, for example. And totally. There are so many accomplished people who have worked in incredibly high-level positions that don't get the opportunity to direct. And this is a great example of why, you know, many more should because they've been in proximity on these sets. And they've seen everything that's gone right and gone wrong. Yeah. And they also know how to stage these scenes. like you said. So he had to get Ryan Reynolds on board, which it seems he did pretty quickly.

And by April of 2011, it's announced in the trades that he has the job. However, something happens in June of 2011. And that something is the Green Lantern. Ah, yeah, the Green Lantern. Oh, no. I was wondering what it was going to come up. Oh, no. I couldn't remember if Green Lantern or Origins came first.

Yeah, it's origins. And so I was like, oh, no. the origins followed by Green Lantern. Yeah, it's a double whammy. Yeah. What should have cemented Ryan Reynolds as superhero material instead became a massive, much-maligned flop, casting a dark shadow over the Deadpool production.

So it only gross $220 million on at least a $200 million budget before marketing. That's a pretty big black hole. Yeah, this was one of the bigger superhero flops of the time. Yes. Ironically, also the Green Hornet didn't do... Don't do green guys, you know? Apparently not, which was too bad.

There were so many really talented people involved in this movie. Because didn't Martin Campbell direct it? I think he did The Mask of Zorro, which I really liked the first one. I love that. And I think Greg Berlanti produced it. This happens all the time. A million talented people, and it ends up just being a bad final product. It's just, you know, it's just you never know until the very end result.

You don't. So on top of this major... money loser, the Deadpool script is also decidedly R-rated and very much geared towards young men. As we know, studios are always looking for a four-quadrant project. This is decidedly one quadrant. So they have a lot of concerns and they're starting to get cold feet. They decide they need to see what the hell this thing would look like. So they give Tim Miller a low six-figure number to create some test footage.

Now, it's interesting. This is the version I saw most commonly, is that, this was when he created the test footage. I did, however, see in some other places that he created the test footage as part of his package to get the job. So a little unclear, but I'm going to go with this one. The studio also wanted to see what Miller could do with a lower overall budget, because again, they don't want to spend a ton of money on this thing now. So Tim Miller in his studio creates the now infamous Deadpool test footage. Have you ever seen this? Yeah, it's really good. It's really good. It's about half of the first chase and fights.

sequence at the very beginning of the movie. It features Ryan Reynolds' real voice, and so much of what you see in this little animated feature is exactly what ends up on screen in the final product, which is really impressive. And it proves that they can do a fully CG character, more or less, that fits seamlessly in, you know, with the live action footage because he wears the mask, you know what I mean, through all of his fight scenes. Yes. We're going to get to how they did that. It's interesting because he's not fully CG, although another character is. But for a lot of the fight scenes, he is fully CG. Yes, a lot of the fight scenes are

almost, if not entirely, CG and they look amazing. Yeah. But despite this fantastic footage, Fox is not sold. They discussed replacing the writers, or Tim Miller, or hell, even Ryan Reynolds. So 20th Century Fox sits on Deadpool for years, despite the likes

of David Fincher and James Cameron throwing their support behind the project and asking the studio what they're doing, waiting around on it. Someone else the Deadpool team reached out to during this time for help was Mr. X-Men himself, Simon Kinberg, who of course is the executive producer of many, if not all, of the X-Men movies, and is sort of the keeper of the X-Men keys. Tim Miller, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds emailed Simon Kinberg directly with the subject

line, Deadpool needs your ass. In the body of the email, it did complete that word to assistance, asking Kinberg to reach out Fox to give them some support. This would prove to be a very useful email. Still, Deadpool sits on the shelf for years until August of 2014 when someone leaks the test footage. That's what I was waiting for, yeah. Yeah, one of the first times I think we'll ever talk about a leak actually being probably the reason the movie gets made. Yeah. So fans go absolutely wild. The response is immediate and intense with everyone advocating for the film to be made. This is finally what lights the fuse. The studio green lights it almost immediately. According to Ryan Reynolds, quote, they didn't even

tell us. They just dated the movie. They put the movie on the slate on their schedule for February 12th, 2016. So we all just called each other the same four guys that worked together for six years on the script and developing the movie. We called each other and said, are we making the movie or are we fired. Wow. Might I also mention, this is also a really interesting moment in Ryan Reynolds' career because RIPD was kind of a low point in 2013 for him. No one's seen it.

It was him and Jeff Bridges. It was actually, I believe, another graphic novel adaptation. But he did a couple of really interesting indie films, Mississippi Grind in 2015 with Ben Mendelssohn. That's really good. The Voices is a really weird serial killer movie, comedy he did, with Gemma Arterton. So it seems, anyhow, that he had this little brief window, Lizzie, where Deadpool was languishing. And he did a couple of really interesting indie films that, you know, I don't know if he's ever going to do work like that again.

But I would encourage you guys to check out Mississippi Grind in particular if you are interested in some of Mr. Reynolds' smaller fare. Nice. Of the leak, Ryan Reynolds also said, quote, this footage was owned by Fox and sort of illegal. So I know that one of us did it. Like, there's four of us. There's me, Ret Rees, Paul Wernick, and Tim Miller. One of us did it. We all said at the beginning that someone should leak it,

so the idea was planted, but I'm 70% sure it wasn't me. According to Deadpool creator Rob Lefield, he and Fox, know who leaked the footage, but they're just never going to tell us. It's got to be Ryan Reynolds, right? I think it's Ryan Reynolds. I don't know. I could see Miller doing it. It's the only movie he's attached to.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, maybe he was attached to other movies. So let me rephrase. We have no idea. But my point is, this is like his best shot maybe at getting a big comic book movie off the ground to direct. That's true. I think it's one of the two of them, if I had to guess. I don't think the writers did it.

No, I don't think so either. As a writer, I would not do it. No, but both of them, I still think it's Ryan Reynolds. But great news. It's greenlit. But now they've basically got no time to make this thing. Fox also wouldn't drop their issue with the PG-13 versus our rating. So Reese and Wernick actually wrote a version of the script that qualified for PG-13 that they were happy enough with to move forward with.

And it probably would have moved forward if it weren't for Simon Kinberg, who stepped back in, read both drafts and basically was like, are you stupid? This has to be rated R. We're not doing a PG-13 version of this. Makes sense. So that's it. We should be off to the races, right? No, with 48 hours left to go before the official, official greenlight, 20th century 5. tells the team they have to slash an additional $7 million off of the budget,

bringing the total down to around $58 million. Which is low to begin with. Freaking Ant Man got $200 million. Yeah, and the Green Lantern had just gotten $200 million. But of course, that's why they're slashing the budget, I'm sure. Yeah. So they ended up shaving off about nine pages from the 110-page script in order to make the final budget possible,

which included cutting characters, Garrison Kane, Sluggo, and Wire, which were reduced down into one, Angel Dust, who would be played by Gina Carrano. A motorcycle chase was eliminated, and the final fight sequence was cut down, removing a major gun battle. So yes, that is why Deadpool leaves his guns in the car. That bit did make me laugh. That was a very good bit. Yes. It turns out much cheaper to shoot with katanas than it is to shoot with guns. But with the budget locked, they're finally able to get started, and apparently one of Ryan Reynolds' first calls was to Oscar-winning makeup artist Bill Corso, who had just done Foxcatcher. With the launch date of February 12th, 2016,

they got to casting additional parts right away. A couple of quick fun facts. Olivia Munn was originally at least considered, if not offered, the role of Vanessa, which ended up going to Morena Baccaran. Brianna Hildebrand, who plays Negasonic Teenage Warhead, was obsessed with Ryan Reynolds as a young teen, including writing his name on her walls and photoshopping herself into pictures with him. So she was probably pretty stoked that this was her first credit. And she gets to basically tell him, shut up the entire movie. She's great.

I really like her. She's very fun. Another fun fact about Negasonic, the Deadpool team wanted to add to her powers for the film. She apparently doesn't have quite the same explosive abilities in the comic. But in order to get permission from Marvel, Fox had to make a trade. So they ended up giving marble permission to use ego the living planet, a character Fox had the rights to in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 in exchange for Deadpool's changes to Negasonic's character.

Oh, interesting. Colossus was initially offered to Daniel Kudmore, who had played him in X2, X-Men The Last Stand, and X-Men Days of Future Past. However, Tim Miller was adamant that the character needed to be completely CGI this time. No more painted silver guy, so Cudmore declined. This is a weird one. he ends up being kind of a mishmash of several performers. The most frequently credited is a Serbian actor named Stefan Kapisik, and he did some of the bodywork, I think, definitely did the voice, while motion capture artist Greg LaSalle did many of the facial expressions.

Now, it seems that another actor, Andre Trichito, was replaced at the last minute by Stefan. But I found conflicting reports on whether or not he actually did any of the bodywork that we see on screen. I think he did, so I don't know what happened there. Got it. A ton of the budget also went to Colossus. And in the Blu-ray commentary, they do mention that an early idea was to have Rob Grinkowski do the facial capture, but I can't tell if they were joking.

I mean, he's evocative of the gronk, I would say. So in March of 2014, with what Ryan Reynolds refers to as, quote, equivalent to the cocaine budget for most studio superhero films and 10 months to finish the movie, principal photography begins in Vancouver, Canada. Right away, the budget continues to be an issue. Reynolds gets into a fight with the studio about bringing the writers to set. He understandably argues it is imperative for this movie,

but 20th Century Fox refuses to pony up the cash. Which I'm sure would have been less than $100,000, even to put them up for the entire time. Yeah. So Ryan Reynolds paid for Ret Rees and Paul Wernick to be there on set out of his own pocket for the entire movie. Wow. That Green Lantern Blood Money.

Coming in handy. Gotta go somewhere. Some fun facts from the shoot, Ryan Reynolds reportedly cried when he finally saw the finished suit for the first time, which, I mean, he'd been working on this for like 10 years at this point.

Yeah. Every scene in the suit with Ryan was filmed twice, once with the mask on, and once without. So that Weta could copy his facial features onto the mask in the final product.

I would also have to imagine you want that clean audio without the mask on. Well, a lot of his lines are ADR. I'm sure. He would be very fun to listen to in an ADR session, just riffing jokes. Anyway.

There's a lot of funny jokes in this that I think were ADR added after the fact. Like his Hugh Jackman impression, I think, is ADR. And when he's like, Which Professor X, MacAvoy or Stewart, that one is as well. The suit originally took about 40 minutes to put on.

By the end, Ryan Reynolds had it down to about 10. There were nine suits in total, and they destroyed seven of them. of them. Ryan took one of the two remaining suits home. He just walked off set with it and, quote, basically told them to go fuck themselves because he had spent 10 years trying to make the movie. The full body makeup could take up to eight to nine hours, meaning that sometimes Ryan Reynolds was, according to himself in the Blu-ray commentary, working around 26 hours. I don't know if that's hyperbole or not. I kind of think it's not because of how short this shoot was, but he was pulling

some intense days across this. Wow. Yeah. He would also apparently just rip the makeup off his face at the end of the day because he wanted it off so badly, much to Bill Corso's chagrin. I love him he was like, I need the guy who made Steve Correll look like that in Foxcatcher. It was a good choice. I mean, it's amazing work in Foxcatcher. In this movie, too.

I think it looks great. Yes. Yeah, it does look great because he's able to emote completely even through the makeup. Yeah. Now, full body did, of course, at work. one point include Ryan Reynolds' penis for the nude fight scene. Fortunately, according to Reynolds, Bill Corso, quote, made his penis look perfect. Good on you, Bill. Yeah. Ryan had the idea of being shot in the butthole in the first fight sequence. And so that whole sequence has actually changed

about a week before they filmed because of that. Also, the gum on the roof of the cab is Tim Miller's actual gum. Wow. Ryan Reynolds wearing a B. Arthur shirt in the sequence with the pizza guy cost them $10,000 in a donation to a charity of choice from B. Arthur's Foundation. The media in Vancouver blamed Ryan Reynolds for messing up traffic for almost two weeks for its opening bridge sequence. I was wondering about that because you can see that Vancouver skyline behind it. Yeah, they really did it. The line, quote, it's almost like the studio couldn't afford another X-Men, was all Ryan Reynolds and also was 100% true. They could not. Apparently, Tim Miller wanted more X-Men, but this was all they could get. Moody teenager and Silverman.

It's great. They make the most of them. It's very funny. It's very fun. One of Ryan's stunt doubles, Alex tore his ACL in the final fight sequence and then still came back for reshoots. Also, apparently one of the hardest sequences in the film was the calendar girls sequence. It just took forever to nail all of the jokes and choreograph it. And apparently they also had an Alanis Morissette day in there at one point, but they did end up cutting it.

Oh. She is, of course, Ryan Reynolds' epit. ex-fiance as well as a fellow Canadian National Treasure. And I think they're on good terms, so I'm sure that would have been fine. And then my favorite fun fact of all, for the final post-credit sequence, which is, of course, an homage to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, they actually had to change the wallpaper because what they originally had was too close to what's in the John Hughes classic. Really? Yes. I didn't realize you could have wallpaper copyright infringement, but apparently you can. Interesting. And he follows through cable.

indeed is the villain in Deadpool 2. Well, he was maybe going to be in somewhere in the first one as well at some point, and I think they decided to hold them for the sequel. Right, because I think you mentioned in the first version of the script that it opened with him getting out of a max security prison, which makes you think of Deadpool 2, the max security prison he's at. Yeah, so I think they did end up reusing and saving a lot of that stuff. Got it. There was also something funny that I think they didn't end up shooting, but they were going to have a post-credit sequence. that would have shown Nicholas Holt as Beast actually taking a shit on Deadpool's lawn, and apparently Nicholas Holt was down to do it, but they couldn't make it happen.

Witness me! All in all, Deadpool shoots in 48 days. The Green Lantern had taken 89. That's very, very, very fast to have that much choreography, fight sequences, that much hair and makeup. Yeah. Wow. That's incredibly impressive. Post-production was accelerated as well with a race to the finish line.

A major challenge was how many jokes to keep in because they had so many. So many from Ryan Reynolds. I imagine it was difficult to cut T.J. Miller back because apparently he just wouldn't stop joking on set. Editor Julian Clark is credited with really keeping the final cut from going completely berserk. The opening credits also kept getting cut and then added back in over and over again. And apparently Simon Kinberg continued to be a protector of, the tone and creative freedom all the way to the end of the project.

I really like the opening credits, and I will say, I don't think my wife particularly enjoyed this movie. She's not a comic book film fan. But the three moments that made her laugh very hard were the opening credits, Ryan Reynolds' baby hand. Yes, it's great. And when he just shoots Ed Screen at the end and Klausus throws up, those were the three parts that made her laugh very hard. I mean, there's some really funny parts in this. No, there absolutely are, but I'm just glad they kept that one in particular because I think even just for a non-fan, it resonates. Now, before any test screenings or premieres, the first civilian to screen Deadpool in full was a terminally ill 13-year-old superfan named Connor McGrath. Oh.

They were trying to get him into a screening as part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, but it turned out he was too sick to travel. So Ryan Reynolds personally traveled to him in Edmonton and surprised him with a private screening. Oh. Ryan and Connor remained friends, frequently texting and checking in until Connor unfortunately passed away. Ryan Reynolds said, I called Connor Bubba, and he called me Bubba too. We met because he loved Deadpool. In a certain sense, he was Deadpool, or at least everything Deadpool aspires to be, balancing pain, fearlessness, love, and a filthy, filthy sense of humor in one body. I wish he could have stuck around a lot longer.

Good for Ryan and the team to get it to him. I just don't know if there's anyone as dedicated to fans as Ryan Reynolds is to the Deadpool fan base. I think he sees how much of a reciprocal dependency there is, you know, for something like this to survive. And I don't mean that in a negative or manipulative way. Just like he understands, like, the real ownership at the end of the day rests with those who hold these properties close to their heart.

Yeah. And he is constantly keeping them at the forefront of the decisions that he's making throughout this whole story. Now, despite a smaller than usual marketing budget, Ryan Reynolds worked closely with the marketing and PR team to pull off an absolutely brilliant campaign ahead of the launch, which, by the way, is unusual for the lead actor to be this involved, and he was heavily involved. Yeah, and I believe he owns a marketing company as a subsidiary of his maximum effort brand now as well, if I'm not wrong. So.

Ryan, do it all, but also take a nap. You might be. doing too much. It included in-costume late-night appearances, 12 days of Deadpool drops around Christmas, emoji billboards. This is the infamous skull-poopal emoji billboard. Custom emojis and a glowing review video from Betty White. All of this added up to an enormous amount of interest for the film. They advertised everywhere from Tinder to Pornhub, and that really hadn't been done before. This is one of the earliest examples of a social media marketing campaign that really, really paid off. Pornhub noted Canadian Company.

Oh, really? I believe. Finally, finally, Deadpool opens on February 16th of 2016. It received mostly positive, though sometimes mixed feedback from critics, but fans absolutely loved it.

It broke the record for the biggest R-rated box office opening, pulling in 132.4 million in its opening weekend. It is so crazy. That is so much money. Yes. And in February, that's amazing. Yeah, Valentine's Day week, which of course was also part of the marketing.

And so many guys got dumped as they dragged their girlfriends to Deadpool. Deadpool. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It could have been a fun Valentine's date. By the end of its run, Deadpool would pull in $782 million on a $58 million budget. Ryan Reynolds would go on to receive his only Golden Globe nomination to date for this film, and Fox didn't even want to make it. Wow, $800 million on Deadpool. And they continue to crush. Also, we will have to see, but I think it's expected that Deadpool and Wolverine will break that record if the projections end up being correct.

Oh, yeah, I think I saw an initial projection that it was going to do over $200 million. And that has been revised. To about 160. Yeah. More recently, I think it'll do incredibly well to very popular superheroes. Yes. Both great. I mean, he doesn't need your money.

Ryan Reynolds is richer than God at this point. I mean, this movie really, I mean, his company, per the dialogue of his character, is called Maximum Effort. He's a maximum effort guy, for sure. Surely, but there's such an interesting meta-narrative. He and the character are so infused in that. to one another across the trajectory. The highs of Ryan Reynolds really do map to the highs of this character in so many ways

and the lows as well. And it's just really interesting that he broke through, I'm trying to think of the right way, Deadpool became a joke candidly around the same time that, you know, not his fault. But Ryan Reynolds, because of those superhero films, became a bit of a joke for a moment. And he knew the only way out was through, you know, deeper. of the crevasse. And I do think that's where the metanarrative quality of the movie works in his favor. Totally. Because he can for the first time address the fans and the audience directly with his opinions on what he'd participated in up until that point. And there's a Green Lantern reference in.

Oh, yeah. They're making fun of X-Men Origins Wolverine throughout. Yeah. There's a lot. I mean, I think also this movie, like, this is his sense of humor coming through in a way that we don't necessarily get to I mean, certainly we do across a lot of his comedies and rom-coms, but not quite as sort of acerbic as it is here. And verging on mean sometimes, which I think may be truer. I don't know. Not to say Ryan Reynolds is mean, but I think he does have a very biting sense of humor. So, Chris, what went right?

I'm not going to give it to Ryan Reynolds because I feel like you are. So I'm instead going to give mine to Tim Miller and Hi, hiring experienced production staff, giving them the opportunities to move up into the directing role. I think too often, at least from the outside looking in, and I would imagine from the studios looking out, we seek the Wunderkin director,

you know, the John Sigelton's, the Damien Chiselle's, you know, of the world. And we forget that there are journeymen, craftspeople, out there who can do this job and have learned how to do this job by working incredibly hard, developing very specific skills that are all tied to storytelling. Like, Tim Miller was right for this because he knew how to use VFX to tell a story. Yes, and he knew how to do it in a cost-effective way because he had been running his own company. Exactly.

I think he was 52 when Deadpool came out. Yeah. So I hope that that is more of a trend. It becomes a trend or continues a trend as opposed to being an exception. Yes, agree. He's wonderful. He does an amazing job in this movie. And also something else I came across with him is that he is actually the reason that the original creators of Deadpool are even credited in the film.

They apparently had reached out to Fox and were like, hey, this is great. Like, are we going to be on here somewhere? Fox Lake was not responding to their emails and they ended up getting a hold of Tim Miller and he was like, I'm going to handle it. And he did. Good. Yeah. And you are correct. I will have to give my what went right to Mr. Ryan Reynolds because throughout the process of researching this episode, I was just blown away by the fact that he, A, didn't give up. Like, I can't imagine going through. I would have quit so fast. So fast. I would quit before I even started. This was so hard to get made. He could. got made so much fun of after X-Men Origin Wolverine.

And the fact that he didn't give up is truly inspiring. And not only that, but he just kept assembling the right team. And he put a lot of faith into the people that they were bringing on board for this. I think he's someone who trusts the experts around him. He's not somebody who tries to own everything, even though he could. Like the amount of work that he does and puts in and the amount of things he's able to do is really insane. I also think that we get to see a little bit of Ryan Reynolds, the writer coming through here with some of the jokes that he's able to pull off. And I believe

he ended up getting a writing credit on Deadpool, too. So I'd love to see more of that. I'll give it to Ryan Reynolds, hardest working man in show business. And that Mitt Mobile $15 a month unlimited plan. Listen, I'm taking a look at it. You know? Well, thank you, Lizzie. That really actually does make me appreciate the movie so much more. Yeah. I did enjoy it, to be clear. But that does really, man, to just birth that thing.

And I did like Deadpool 2 actually quite a bit more. I really like Deadpool 2. So we got that. And I'm excited to see Deadpool, Wolverine. Deadpool and Wolverine. Check it out. Could be great. Go to the theater.

Support theaters. Film's not dead. Despicable Me 4. just made a bunch of money. So great. I love the minions. I'm not going to lie. Oh, boy. I think they're great. And the gentle minions, that meme, I was all for it. All right, guys, with that, we have to, of course, support our supporters. If you do want to support this podcast, the best way you can do that is to tell somebody in your life that it is the best thing that ever happened to you and get them to start listening. Head to Apple Podcasts. Leave us a rating and

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production and Eddie Murphy let it slip that they're doing a donkey spinoff. So we're just in time, Lizzie, for the coverage of Shrek. There's no original IP. Can't wait. Talk to you guys next time. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and check out our website at what went wrong pod.com. What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Editing music by David Bowman. Additional research for this episode provided by Sarah Baum. Thank you.