[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine]

The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub sits down with
Deadpool & Wolverine
‘s Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy for an hour long spoiler-filled interview.
Levy and Reynolds discuss storyboarding certain scenes early on in the process, Easter eggs to look out for, and if we’re getting an extended cut.
They also talk cameos, the post-credit scene, Deadpool’s future, Taylor Swift, Ladypool, bringing back legacy characters, Chris Evans, and Henry Cavill.

As Deadpool & Wolverine continue their ascent at the box office, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to chat with Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy for an interview Reynolds calls “the spoiler one where you’re supposed to just get the chance to open up the robe completely, and I show you stuff.” This gave us the chance to ask some of our most burning questions after the credits (and post-credits scene) rolled. Now, we’ve got the answers all in one place.

Deadpool’s third film officially introduced him to Kevin Feige’s MCU, as well as Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, bringing this duo together onscreen again at long last. For a bromance this epic and long-anticipated, fans already knew the movie would pack a punch or two, but Reynolds and Levy brought a whole multiverse of legacy characters, variants, and special surprises that brought even Reynolds to tears. While he may not know who Earth-616’s anchor being is, Reynolds does admit Jackman is his in real life and discusses working with the Deadpool & Wolverine crew, his gratitude for the overwhelming response of the movie, and honoring a time when actors like Hugh Jackman and himself made a name for themselves.

During the interview, which you can read below, Reynolds and Levy discuss their process before and during production when perfecting this story. They discuss honoring legacy characters who “never got a third act,” like Wesley Snipes as Blade, Jennifer Garner as Elektra, and Channing Tatum’s Gambit movie that was ultimately lost to the “bygone era” of 20th Century Fox. They talk about filming the action sequences between Deadpool and Wolverine, the rumored Taylor Swift appearance, Henry Cavill’s cameo, bringing back Chris Evans with the promise of an R-rated Marvel moment, and so much more.

Deadpool & Wolverine Wolverine joins the “merc with a mouth” in the third installment of the Deadpool film franchise.Release Date July 26, 2024 Runtime 128 minutes Writers Rob Liefeld , Fabian Nicieza , Paul Wernick , Wendy Molyneux , Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin Studio Marvel Studios Expand

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Rakes in Unholy Box Office Success
Image by Jefferson Chacon

COLLIDER: I’m going to obviously start with congratulations. Did you ever think you guys were going to beat Jesus at the box office?

RYAN REYNOLDS: Wow. Well, thank you for positioning us into a no-win cultural situation that will result in the end of our careers as we know it. Off to a great start. Love it.

But seriously, you guys are going to be the highest-grossing R-rated movie. It’s incredible.

REYNOLDS: Isn’t there a line in Deadpool 2 where I say, “We beat Passion of the Christ overseas where there’s no such thing as religion?” I think there is. They didn’t get me then, they won’t get me now. No, look, we’re thrilled with any and all success the movie is having, and I say that because we—I know it sounds like a lot of very fluffy and adorable words—genuinely made this movie with nothing but love and enthusiasm and pure joy. It exists exclusively to, at least in our minds creatively, flood brains with serotonin now and always, and to be a movie that you can rewatch and revisit as much as humanly possible and still find new details lurking in the background and lines and different little throwaway moments.

SHAWN LEVY: We really, really wanted to satisfy fans, but we also really set out to make a movie that was for everyone, and that would benefit from prior fluency, but also be, as Ryan says, built for audience joy, whether or not you come to this as someone with tremendous MCU fluency. So the way it’s played so broadly, and replayed so broadly, is all of our aspirations coming true. So definitely, you catch us in a very good mood.

REYNOLDS: Also, just to add on to one last thing, it’s not something that I think Disney would ever say out loud, or Marvel, but I’ve said it a few times, and I noticed it’s caught a wind a little bit in trade papers and stuff: we were kind of making a four-quadrant R-rated movie. Ultimately, that was the goal. If my kids can enjoy it as much as—and I’m not telling other parents to take their kids, I’m saying I took my kids—some of the other movies that they also enjoy, like Inside Out 2 and whatnot, I feel like we’ve done something pretty special and pretty cool, and something to be proud of.

People genuinely love this movie, and they love the collaboration of the three of you. Have there been those additional phone calls after all this box office success at Marvel, being like, “So, let’s talk about the future?”

REYNOLDS: I would say Shawn made it pretty clear, and I think in the most loving way because, talk about the greatest uptown problem any human beings could have is a studio like that saying, “What’s next?” or, “How can we make something else?” But this movie was made as a complete experience. It wasn’t meant to be a commercial for another movie. It wasn’t meant to be any of that stuff. I get a great deal of joy making a movie like that. But honestly, right at this moment, I have no idea if I’ll ever wear that Deadpool suit again. I hope I do, but I don’t know. Right now’s the time to just kind of hang it up for a bit and see what happens next.

LEVY: A lot of people have asked me, “Were you pressured to service the next movie, or to set up something in Avengers?” Really, to their credit, neither Disney or Marvel ever asked us to service anything beyond one really satisfying self-contained story. And we made exactly that with their support. So as far as the future, time will tell

So, how close was Taylor Swift to being in this movie?

REYNOLDS: We’d be insanely lucky as human beings on earth to have any involvement from from Taylor. Just the fact that she watched the movie and loved it, that was plenty for us.

Image by Jefferson Chacon

You said at the junket that there was one joke that Marvel asked you not to include? What was that one joke?

REYNOLDS: I will never ever say. Honestly, it would be easy for me and Shawn, and certainly Hugh and anyone else, my entire Maximum Effort company, to sort of position Disney and Marvel as the stern, uptight, conservative parents in this situation, but the reality was, it was the opposite. That was probably the biggest plot twist for all of us was that there was nothing but supreme and unconditional support from them. There was a note about this one line, which is that I was asked to take the line out—I was not even mandated to take the line out. To quote someone in a very high position of leadership at Disney, “I’m In for a penny, I’m in for a pound. If you take it out, I’d love it. If you don’t, I will still love and support you, this movie, and all the hard hard work that went into it.” So, at that point, you go, “Do I want to stick with the pride? Do I care? Am I going to die on a hill over one joke?” The answer is, “Of course, I’m going to die on a hill over one joke,” but then you sober up a few weeks later, and you say, “You know what…?”

LEVY: Many weeks later. My buddy Ryan is one stubborn son of a bitch. It took weeks for the ground to soften. We’re going to take that joke to the grave, but I’ll say that the joke that was written to replace the changed joke is not only as good a joke, but maybe even smarter.

REYNOLDS: The intelligence and merit of the joke is certainly debatable, but it’s the Pinocchio joke. It replaced what was there before, and I’m not losing any sleep over it. But I gotta say, when they ask that one thing, and they’ve just been partners at that level, which is rare in this business, and people who put their faith and trust in us to not only make a movie responsibly, and finish on time and on budget and get a day and a half of reshoots, which we’re both super proud of for any movie, that’s extraordinary, but particularly a comic book movie, you gotta take that stuff to heart, and you gotta be a good partner. We want to be good partners, always.

Do you guys ever consider recreating the Hulk 181 cover with Wolverine?

LEVY: I do, and in fact, we did recreate an image of a reflection in Wolvy’s claws, which is how we introduced the Hulk in that one scene with the John Byrne Wolverine. But no, beyond that, we had to be our own disciplinarians. When you do a movie like this, you have an unlimited amount of characters you could use if you wanted, but if you do too much of that, then you’re never going to invest in the central story of this Logan and this Deadpool. So, no, that image we didn’t, but as you’ve seen and as the internet has very generously pointed out, many other panels inspired me and inspired us as we built this movie.

Eventually, this will be on 4K and Blu-ray. Will you be including an extended cut/deleted scenes, or is the theatrical cut the one and only version, no deleted scenes, this is what we’re going to release?

LEVY: This is the cut of the movie. There will be no extended cut because this is the cut that we wanted.

REYNOLDS: I asked Shawn about doing a Snyder cut, and he didn’t seem to feel like that was appropriate or warranted.

LEVY: With all due respect to Zack. With all due respect. There are, however, a small handful of deleted scenes that will be included, as well as a commentary by Ryan and I.

REYNOLDS: And a gag reel.

LEVY: And a really good gag reel.

REYNOLDS: It’s really fun. The gag reel isn’t like bloopers as much as it is alt takes and moments because everyone is so professional on this movie. I think a lot of people think I just kind of show up, and you pull a string, and I kind of improv through the day. I don’t. We write everything. We write 10 alternate jokes to any given joke, and not just for me. I write jokes for other characters, someone who maybe has never even had a line in the background or whatever. You kind of plot it out in advance. So, seeing some of those alts will be really fun for audiences.

Yes, the Full ‘Deadpool’ NSYNC Dance Exists
And yes, you might get to see it.
Image by Jefferson Chacon

Is there a full video of the NSYNC choreography? And when and where and when can fans see it?

LEVY: I’m going to tell you the truth: currently, that footage exists. Yes.

REYNOLDS: Of which?

LEVY: Of Dancepool doing the entirety of the song. I have to say, in our wildest dreams, we didn’t dare to hope for this scale of mad love for the opening credit sequence, including that dance. So, there are two takes where Dancepool performs the whole scene and the whole song. We have not edited it together, and now you’ve inspired me to see if it’s too late or if we can rally and put that out there because it is just maximum delight.

I definitely think you should release it on what’s called the social media.

REYNOLDS: Oh, nice. Also, worth noting, it’s important to us, too, to always acknowledge the people behind this stuff. Nick Pauley, who did the choreography for the “Bye Bye Bye” dance, and then even making sure that NSYNC had a full and unconditional welcoming into obviously the premiere but also to be part of some of the fun around this because, in a certain sense, they’re kind of co-authors of that opening credit sequence and I think there’s a high bar for that for Deadpool movies; the opening credits have always been pretty great.

LEVY: Nothing terrified me more, Ryan. I’ll admit this to you now, Deadpool 1 and 2 are awesome, and so the bar was high, but no aspect of that high bar scared me more than the title sequences because they’re both so good. I remember spending a few sleepless nights thinking, “How can we meet that bar? How do we even have a chance of maybe exceeding it?” So that’s why the reaction to the title sequence is so meaningful to me. We had the opening, we had the premise, we had the actions, we had Nsync, we had the song, and then it’s time to go and explore title treatments. And we did as movies always do, which is you talk to a number of title houses. You’re just going looking for an approach to the font to the titles, and one of those houses, called Method, which had done work on both other Deadpool movies, they were just one of, like, five different title houses, they pitched a font, and then they go, “We had an idea. It’s not really a title idea, but it just makes us laugh. What about if Deadpool is dancing?” Literally, it was a title house that came up with this idea of this intercut with dancing, and it changed the entire DNA of the opening sequence. So, you never know where a great idea is gonna come from.

REYNOLDS: We picked that up on a day when we had one shoot day in LA to get Jon Favreau, which was just after we’d finished principal photography in London. So, we grabbed the dancing stuff on that day.

There Are “Hundreds” of ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Easter Eggs Left to Find
And Ryan Reynolds reveals one for the ‘Les Mis’ fans.
Image by Jefferson Chacon

How many Easter eggs have not been found in the movie yet?

REYNOLDS: Hundreds.

LEVY: There’s a lot—there’s definitely dozens. I’m kind of keeping an eye on social media because some stuff is being called out, but boy, some of them are subtle and will only become apparent through a very attentive rewatch.

REYNOLDS: Even little ones that I love. I’ll give this one away: when I punt Wolverine’s adamantium skull toward camera, and I say, “Maradona goal,” and it goes up, if you really look closely, you’ll see that his prisoner number from Les Mis is engraved in the back of the throat of the skull as it comes toward you—24601. It’s little things like that. Also, I just love sharing those things with Hugh. I love being like, “Hey, pay close attention to the skull. What do you see?” He’s like, “Are there numbers in there?” I’m like, “There are very specific numbers.” And you see his face, and it was just great.

Has James Mangold seen the movie, and what did he think?

REYNOLDS: I don’t know, actually. I have no idea.

LEVY: I don’t know either.

REYNOLDS: As of this recording, we’ve only been in theaters for six days.

LEVY: We’ve all reached out to him, and Jim and I exchanged a really nice text before the movie came out. I don’t know if he’s watched yet.

REYNOLDS: The first time we ever pitched a Deadpool and Wolverine movie was after Logan with James Mangold and Scott Frank and a few other people, and obviously, that never materialized. So it wasn’t until five years later that we had six billion treatments and Hugh calling and saying, “I want to come back,” that it really happened.

Why Was Thor Crying?
Image by Jefferson Chacon

This was the number one question that I got on Twitter by a mile. Why was Thor crying?

REYNOLDS: You know what? I got this one, Shawn. I’ll just say that it’s something that we are going to account for at some point. That’s about all I can really say right now, but we will account for it.

Is it something that will be on the Blu-ray or just down the road at some point?

REYNOLDS: I know this is the spoiler one where you’re supposed to just get the chance to open up the robe completely and I show you stuff. I told you I wouldn’t be wearing pants, and I did. I failed you. But yeah, that will materialize.

Sure. I’ll leave it be.

This ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Scene Only Took Two Days to Shoot
Image by Jefferson Chacon

I love the fight sequence in the Honda. How long does a sequence like that take to film, and what pressure did you put on yourself? Fans have been waiting so long to see these fight sequences between Deadpool and Wolverine. How long did it take just to put them together?

LEVY: You’re right. That is what people have been waiting to see. Every Deadpool-Wolverine fight needed to have its own language and be differentiated. So the adamantium skeleton, the Void, and what’s the opposite of a wide-open fight in the Void? A very contained space. It was in an early draft of our script where the screenwriting team wrote the idea of a fight in a minivan. That was not one of the long ones. I want to say we shot that entire fight in two days in a real van in real woods.

REYNOLDS: In the woods. It was also kind of based on that stunt guy expression, which is, “It’s a knife fight in a phone booth.” You’re trying to find a new and different way to have that same kind of knife fight in a phone booth experience. The fact that Wade was a used car dealer before, and he has this inexplicable hatred for the Honda Odyssey, which happens to be a wonderful minivan and something Shawn Levy, himself, owns. Not kidding, he actually owns it, named Betsy, which is why it’s called Betsy in the movie. That kind of stuff always sort of tickles me.

LEVY: I love that the headline can now be “Shawn Levy Names His Honda Odyssey.” Like, why does she even have a name? And yes, it’s a she.

REYNOLDS: He will anthropomorphize anything, that Shawn Levy.

You don’t have to ask Honda for permission, do you? Or can you just use whatever you want?

REYNOLDS: No, but we did feel like it was important to include later on somewhere in the movie, and it changed places a couple of times and finally landed, I think, in the right spot, which is that, “I take it all back. The Honda Odyssey fucks hard.”

LEVY: Which, by the way, I’m sure is not what the Honda executive suite would have preferred as the apologetic advertisement for their brand, but that is the Deadpool thumbs-up.

REYNOLDS: If I was fucking Honda, and I love marketing like this, right now, I’d put up the biggest fucking billboard I can in Times Square that says, “The Honda Odyssey fucks hard.”

LEVY: That would be the greatest ad campaign.

REYNOLDS: If you bought one billboard, everyone’s taking a picture of it and sharing it on social media. Everybody wins. But hey, I’m not part of a Happy Honda corporation.

We Almost Had Nicolas Cage as Ghost Rider in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’
Image by Jefferson Chacon

Did you ever consider Nicolas Cage as Ghost Rider and using him in the movie?

REYNOLDS: Yes.

Did it come close?

REYNOLDS: It came to a conversation for sure. But no.

LEVY: Collider, you’re getting the good stuff today. Reynolds is running at the mouth.

Ryan Reynolds Knew Henry Cavill Could Handle the Pressure of Wolverine
Image via Lionsgate

People go crazy when Henry Cavill shows up in the movie, and I love the name “The Cavillry.” How did the name come about, and how tough was it to get him in it and keep it under wraps? Because that’s just such a great sequence.

REYNOLDS: The first day of shooting, and honestly, it was born of the reality, which is, I can’t think of a more impossible and frustrating role to recast than something like Wolverine. As an actor, it would be an awful and intimidating feeling stepping into that. You’d have to really reinvent it and take it a different way. But it was born of, like, if I had to cast someone as Wolverine, and the guy who’s made it canon in every way, shape, and form on-screen and off wasn’t available for some reason, Henry Cavill would be pretty cool.

LEVY: Literally, that idea was hatched by Ryan, named by Ryan in that same instance, and it was not long after the Superman/DC shuffling of the deck. It was just on our minds. Literally, it was the idea, the name, a text, and an answer, all in 15 minutes.

REYNOLDS: Also, I’m lucky to have people’s trust, too. Gone are the days when people were like, “Wait, Deadpool? Are you gonna make fun of me or something?” Deadpool never punches down. The only person he punches down on is me, Ryan Reynolds. No one else. So the conversation with Henry was like, “It’d be fun.” It’s one of the few cameos I would say that’s a real cameo, whereas the other ones are more like surprises and people who have a reason to be there. But he was a great sport, and we love Henry. I will do anything for him to pay that forward.

I am a huge fan of Henry Cavill. I will say that it is the only cameo in the movie—everything else is a full character.

Chris Evans Had Ryan Reynolds “Giggling Like an Idiot”

How happy was Chris Evans when you asked him, because he was going to be able to curse his brains out in a Marvel movie?

LEVY: Ryan, that was so you. I’ll just say that he was over the moon happy. In fact, it was the on-ramp to yes. Ryan and I reached out to Chris—Chris had done a great brief cameo for us in Free Guy, and Ryan, in under 10 minutes, wrote the end credit button and wrote one of the great dirty monologues in the history of cinema and sent it to Chris. Chris was like, “If that’s in the movie, I’m in the movie.” And so from that moment, we knew what the tag would be. There was never a discussion of cutting it out or removing it. Chris came in and just murdered it—fully memorized, two takes, nailed it.

REYNOLDS: We’re so grateful to have him there. He’s only there for two days. If you think about how much he did in just two days, it was crazy. And that’s Shawn. I will say right now that I’ve never in my life worked with a director who has more of a handle, like a military general that also a Dutch impressionist on the side. There are so many tools in Shawn’s shed with just getting shit done on a movie and done very, very well, unique, and there’s a stamp to it. Like the Chris Evans experience. I was panicking because we only had two days with him, and it’s like if one person is 15 minutes late, we’re fucked. It was one of those kinds of situations.

Particularly because huge chunks of the movie were shot in natural environments because we didn’t want to shoot on a sound stage. In the summer, we’d have 10 to 12 hours of daylight, 13 or 14 sometimes, but when we went back after the strike, we had seven hours of usable daylight and had to make sure everyone stayed on set. Like, no one goes back to trailers or hangs, we have to stay on set. And Chris came, and I was like, “Hey man, do you want cue cards? I know this is like rapid-fire.” He was like, “I’m not a fucking rookie.” He just came in and murdered it. It’s the only time in the movie I am fucking up a take laughing, except I’m thanking God I have a mask on. I was definitely quiet about it, but I was giggling like an idiot under the mask because he delivered that. I would have wrecked everything if I weren’t wearing that mask.

LEVY: The only other time where Ryan could not keep it together was when Channing Tatum was doing the line about “laying them buttery nuts all up in my mouth.” I shot out of there, and I was like, “What’s up, dog?”

REYNOLDS: “What’s up, dog?” It was this sort of moon-eyed, “What’s up, dog?” Just like he himself was back there flying out of his mother’s cavernous… It was just crazy. I couldn’t keep a straight face there either, thank God, again, I had a mask, but I was audible, and I wrecked stuff.

These Legacies Were Brought In Very Early On

One of the highlights of the film is when you introduce X-23, Blade, Elektra, and Gambit. How early on did you know it was gonna be those four characters, or was that one of those things early on where you’re debating, “Who can we get that can actually be in this movie for more than a few days?”

LEVY: Honestly, we knew early because we knew that it wanted to be characters that fed into this idea of legacy. So, immediately, early on, we arrived at Elektra, we arrived at X-23 and Blade. Then this notion of cutting against that grain with this character who never got a beginning, while others are aspiring to an ending. So we knew pretty early on. It was not based on availability, it was based on story. This is remarkable: those four actors came to England a week early to learn and rehearse their choreography, and then the day before they were supposed to shoot, the actor strike shut down the movie. They all flew back from Europe, back to the States, and then came back again months later, in the dead of winter, and showed up and delivered.

REYNOLDS: I don’t recall being that bummed out. I understood why we had to strike and totally supported it, but I was sure we were never going to ever see them again or get them back. They were perfect. Really, the criteria for that casting and why we thought of them was that they were folks who just didn’t have a third act. For me, there was a real personal connection to Wesley [Snipes] and Blade. I believe that without Blade and what he did in 1998, I don’t know that there’s a Fox universe, I don’t know that there’s an MCU.

I don’t think people acknowledge how pivotal Wesley Snipes’ role as Blade is in the overarching cinematic comic book world that we all see that is so imbued in every aspect of film culture at the moment.

So, that was a big one. Then, of course, Jen Garner’s Elektra, who just, again, didn’t really ever get her just desserts in that regard; Channing was just a dream; and then to get Dafne [Keen] in there, too, is just…

LEVY: That was early. Adding Laura into the movie was an early decision by us as a screenwriting team, and that predated all the cameos. We knew the idea that Laura knows Logan, but this Logan doesn’t know who she is, and that that would, in many ways be the soul of the movie that we knew had something magic that it could unlock.

REYNOLDS: Props to Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick for the Chris Evans suggestion as Johnny Storm. They brought that one up, and boy, did we run with that. It was amazing.

That brings the house down. For me, I had heard rumblings about certain characters being in the movie. I did not know Wesley Snipes as Blade was coming back. I lost my shit in the theater. I was so happy.

REYNOLDS: I cried at San Diego Comic-Con because it was just the most– I don’t know, man, just feeling, that redemption in the air and how powerful and what a movie star Wesley Snipes is. The bet we were making was how much audiences miss him dearly—they just maybe didn’t realize it yet.

LEVY: I also would say that feeling in a movie theater of collective awe and joy, that is the dream of the theater experience. That is something that is just unique to being in a dark room with strangers. I’ll admit to a slight addiction, at this point, to the reaction videos that are proliferating on social media. Those things are like crack to me because it brings me back to that feeling I, too, had at Comic-Con and every time I’ve seen the movie. It’s the pure joy we were trying to lace this movie with.

REYNOLDS: I love looking around as Wes comes in. Jen blows the roof off the place, and then it’s like this layer cake of awesome that just keeps happening. When that playing card breaks the frame and then flies back into Channing’s fingers as you reveal… I don’t know if there’s a better feeling on Earth than that.

Black Lively Inspired Ladypool Long Before ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’
Image via Marvel Studios

I definitely have to touch on Ladypool. How early on did you know it was going to be your significant other? How did that come about?

REYNOLDS: That’s one of the earliest things that Rob Liefeld talked about with Ladypool was that he had always envisioned Blake in that role. I think that predated even my relationship with her, so it’s kind of ironic and weird that it happened that way. So, early on that was definitely the discussion. We were all sitting on stage figuring out exactly how this was going to go, and that was some of the latest writing was around that stuff, like the eleventh hour.

Was there ever a discussion about actually showing the X-Men dying on Wolverine’s home dimension?

REYNOLDS: Yeah.

LEVY: Yes. We talked about it. We ended up doing it with a soundscape and with sound design. We did talk about it, but ultimately, it felt like the specifics of those characters’ deaths don’t matter to this story as much as the way they haunt Logan. So, we chose to keep the focus on him.

REYNOLDS: It’s a little bit like what you don’t see is, I think, more haunting than what you do see. Maybe I’m wrong, but Shawn and I felt like it would cheapen it if you’re seeing all these people, these kids, these grown-ups… Really, the biggest win, I think, for us with the Wolverine character was two things—everybody places a lot of emphasis on the suit. Now, I love that we kind of use the suit as a hair shirt, as a kind of penance that he’s wearing this thing that is like a punishment that covers this body. I think there’s something really powerful about that, the way somebody mourns in black. That is such an expression of mourning. So, for him to have that, for us was a huge win, and probably the first thing we said to Hugh when he said, “I’m in.” I was like, “You’ve got to wear this suit.” And he was in right right away.

Image by Jefferson Chacon

But then the other one was really kind of scratching that itch of Wolverine, the idea that the Berzerker rage takes over, he kills, and he can be, to a certain degree, indiscriminate about that killing. That is a big part of the shame, and that’s a secret that we kind of slowly unravel through Cassandra Nova, who’s roaming around in his head. Because Deadpool and Wolverine, the thing that they have the most in common is shame. They both have an enormous amount of shame, and I think men and women deal with shame differently. Men deal with shame poorly; women can deal with shame in a much more actualized way, I think. That’s just my theory—not to get into gender specifics. But Deadpool deflects it with humor and sexual tension in his own squirrely, half-a-brain head of his end and Wolverine, of course, is aggression and violence. So, touching on some of that Berzerker rage, which is genuinely in the canon of Wolverine and the comics, and getting to acknowledge that he didn’t just kill the bad people when he lost it is, I think, pretty damn powerful and not necessarily something you want to see. You want to feel it.

The Wolverine Mask Reveal Had to Come at a Particular Moment
Image by Jefferson Chacon

One of the things that people freaked the fuck out in the theater is when you finally see Hugh put the mask on. As the director, how did you want to frame that sequence and finally do the reveal and film that action?

LEVY: So did we when we filmed it, by the way. So did we. I just remember very early on, when I was still storyboarding, it became clear that, “Okay, he’s got to wear the mask, but don’t give it up too early. Make them wait for it. Make it later, and make it count.” Then we were shooting that day, and when Hugh pulled it on, we knew that we were going to undercut it with Deadpool, when first he says, “You save the good stuff for special occasions,” and Wolverine says, “Killing, mostly.”

REYNOLDS: There’s a little smile on his face when he says that, too.

LEVY: We love that read. That’s one of literally 500 readings, a few that Ryan and I are obsessed with. But we just knew that that moment would land, and so it had to be something that the audience waits for and that it’s really suiting up for the ultimate battle royale, which was always going to be this single shot, lateral-tracking move of Wolverine and Deadpool for the first time, not fighting each other but fighting together.

There Was No Plan B to Madonna
Image by Jefferson Chacon

What if Madonna had said no?

REYNOLDS: Fuck me.

LEVY: We would have been fucked. If Madonna had said no, I don’t know what I would have done. I honestly don’t know. My plan B was to ask her again, which isn’t great. I think that might have been my C, D, and E all the way through the alphabet until you go back around again with numbers beside it. Since 2017, Madonna has been stuck in my head on a motion control camera that is moving left to right. I know this is a comic book movie, I’m not trying to sound like a douche, but the David Lean-Lawrence of Arabia thing, everything moving left to right in the frame kind of giving us the sense of progression and a journey and an overarching theme of moving from one place to another where Deadpool and Wolverine are working together—it was always in my head exactly like that, except in the original version, it was a sequence that I had that predated any kind of green light.

This was part of a treatment that I’d written in 2021 where Colossus dies, and he says a kind of a callback to Deadpool had been on this journey of self-discovery, or Wade had, basically, where he’d, similar to now, given up the Deadpool suit, given up violence, actually, and all these things, and kind of had been absorbed into a cult kind of vibe, that Colossus felt like he needed to get him out of. Anyway, so Deadpool doesn’t swear, and it’s very chaste. Then, when Colossus dies in the third act for the same mo-co sequence with “Like a Prayer,” he says—because in Deadpool 2, as I’m dying on the ground, I do this long, elaborate death where I keep coming up with new reasons to not die, and it’s exhausting all of my friends around me who are saying goodbye—I do a callback where Colossus says, “Say ‘fuck’ for me,” as he’s lying on the ground dying. It’s the same thing I said to him, and I’m like, “What?” And I’m emotional, and he says, “Come on, we’ll do it together. On three. It’ll be fun. One… two…” and he dies before I even can say it.

You see Wade step out of frame, and you would hold on to the empty frame for maybe two minutes of Colossus—something excruciating, something that the studio would go, like, “You can’t do that.” And Wade comes back into frame wearing the full Deadpool suit, and the swords, pulls them out, kicks open the door, “Like a Prayer” starts, and then that mo-co shot against zombies… I loved it. It was such a powerful sequence. That construction is still there, but it’s with Wolverine now. And obviously, starts and ends much differently.

I know that you had been working on a version of Deadpool 3 for a while. Was there a version before this that you were like, “This is the one. I really want this one to go,” in terms of the story, structure, whatever it was, or do you think ultimately this was the best version?

REYNOLDS: I don’t think like that. All those ideas you have and places you go, oftentimes they get absorbed and used again somewhere else, so I never had that. There were lots of stories that I pitched to Kevin Feige that, for whatever reason, didn’t work for him, and maybe I really loved, and then vice versa sometimes. But I said it earlier, too, I believe in the idea that you don’t want to just be a good partner, you want to be a responsible one. I know that particularly within Hollywood when you talk to filmmakers, there’s a kind of Easy Rider, Raging Bull kind of, “Fuck the studio. We’re gonna do our thing.” And it’s just like, “Well, hold on. The studio’s fucking paying for the thing.” There are a lot of people there who might have an opinion on it that is valid. There are a lot of people who might have an opinion on it that you don’t like the opinion, or you don’t think it’s useful, and that’s fine, too. But that happens in every creative situation. I love notes. I love it when somebody’s like, “I don’t understand that. I don’t like that,” because it always opens up your mind. Constraint is the greatest fuel for creativity on Earth. Too much time and too much money, particularly in movies, kind of destroys creativity and innovation. You start thinking, how do you spend your way out of something with spectacle rather than character even though you remember character? I don’t know that audiences remember spectacle as much unless it’s incredibly unique and special.

Related Why Aren’t Cable and Domino in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’? “Almost like the studio couldn’t afford another X-Man.”

People will remember when Hugh puts on his mask. You and Shawn obviously did some early friends and family screenings. What did you learn from those early screenings that impacted the finished film?

REYNOLDS: There were a lot of little moments here and there. The overall always kind of worked, which we were really lucky to have. But that’s, again, credit to the most thorough development phase. There was no version where we, meaning Shawn, myself, and Hugh, were ever going to step on any set, or even go to London to begin prep without everything laid out, without a script that we felt was airtight, without alts written on a separate document that we had at our disposal with all of these factors. So, I felt like the movie got off to a great start, particularly given the history of comic book movies and how it’s date and poster first, and quality second sometimes.

It was one of those unusual movies, too, where we didn’t really have the option of just showing it in Dallas. Even Deadpool 2, I remember our Dallas test screening being, like this game-changing, incredible moment. We stuck with, and rightly so, the Marvel system of testing movies, and it’s a lot more in-house, but still got all the data we needed out of it. And I want descent, and so does Shawn. Shawn is so good at dealing with something that might feel heartbreaking for a filmmaker. He’s so good at killing darlings. And that’s kind of what you have to do. Really, those test screenings are about shrinking the movie as opposed to changing.

Totally. And also, you want to know if something’s not working early on.

REYNOLDS: Who wants to fucking go ahead, “My way or the highway?” I want feedback, man. So does Shawn. We love, love hearing people’s perspectives. I did get one proper friends and family for us, so I had every friend from every background, every aspect of society and life in that room just to make sure that we were giving everybody what they wanted, and bending without ever breaking. I never wanted to hurt or have anybody from any aspect of our world feel ostracized or excluded or shitty about something that’s in the movie. So, I really went through a lot of those kinds of things to make sure that everyone felt like this was great. I’m so grateful for those screenings.

One of my favorite bits in the entire film is in the first act. It’s the birthday party, you go into the hallway, and the TVA soldiers show up, and it’s the dialogue you say to these guys. It brings tears to my eyes. I just can’t believe what you say. I can’t believe Disney approved it. I can’t believe it’s in multiplexes. It’s fantastic. With something like that, how long does that actually take for you to write? Because it’s just fucking great.

REYNOLDS: It’s not long to write. There are certain chunks of the movie that Shawn and I really handled and other chunks that Zeb Wells was dealing with because Zeb is so fluent in nerd, and it was so helpful to have. Then Rhett and Paul would handle other other chunks. So, we’d get stuff done that way. I wrote that particular one, and it was fast. I think the Pretty Woman joke was right on the day because I was chewing a mint or something when I was starting to rehearse it or just get ready to shoot. I’m doing an impression of Josh McLaglen, who was our first AD, right there when I’m saying, “Spare us a clean-up on aisle asshole and move on down the hallway. Is everybody good with this? Everybody good with this plan?” That’s so how he talks. He’s this ex-marine, and he recognized it right away. You could see him blushing and giggling over in the corner.

Was Professor X Ever Going to Be in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’?
Image via 20th Century Studios

You have Cassandra in the movie. How much did you guys debate having Patrick Stewart or James McAvoy as Professor X somehow in the film?

REYNOLDS: That was never a discussion, albeit, two utterly marvelous actors and what they created is just fucking incredible. No, other than the movie serving as something of a eulogy to an entire bygone era, being the Fox Universe and how important it was to Hugh, to me, and to Shawn. The salad days and the best moments of our whole career were spent at 20th Century Fox at that studio, making stuff that changed our lives, all three of us. So everything we did was just to honor that world. It also felt like it was a zig when people are expecting a zag. When you know Deadpool and Wolverine entered the MCU, you’re thinking, “Oh, shit, who are gonna see from the MCU?” And the answer is it’s Happy Hogan.

We had all we needed, though. As soon as we saw the imagery of Cassandra Nova’s hands in someone’s face and head, we just thought that was so cool. It gave us a chance to see inside the minds of these guys for a moment, and what really makes them tick, and what really matters to them, the things that they don’t say out loud. It was like a cheat code for that, too. And then, of course, Emma Corrin, they are utterly incredible at their job and so utterly enigmatic. What an honor and pleasure it was to watch them close up. It was crazy.

They are fantastic. 2015 Fantastic Four—did you think about putting someone from that movie in this?

REYNOLDS: Yeah, that was a part of it, but you’re never going to get the mislead like Chris Evans, with him doing it and the license to thrill after that. Also, we were trying to be mindful of the budget. We were trying to make the movie. We always understood it’s rated R, it isn’t a blank check, and part of our responsibilities was to return the investment that they’re making in us. So I never want a budget that I don’t feel like I can make good on, and the more toys you start asking for and the more characters you start wanting to license, the deeper into that sort of point of no return it becomes.

Green Day Inspired ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’s Post-Credits Scene
Image via Marvel Studios

The post-credits Fox memorial is so good. Can you talk a little bit about putting that in the film and how you guys decided what video to show?

REYNOLDS: It was interesting. I was sitting at a restaurant with Shawn and his family, and I was sitting next to Blake and my family, and it happened at that lunch all at once. We brought a little speaker that we were just playing music on, and Shawn and I had both been looking for a way to come full circle with this 20th Century Fox logo sort of buried into the ground, and it’s in a slightly decrepit state. I just felt like that theme needed an end cap of some kind, something that delivers what that message was early in the movie and actually just serves as a great punctuation mark to it. And “Good Riddance,” that Green Day song, just came on the speaker, and that whole idea came. I was like, “Wait, hold on. What if we did like a digital eulogy? Like we’re seeing me when I’m just like a puppy still, as Wade Wilson the first time back in 2009, and Hugh as well?”

It became that, and then Shane Reid and Dean Zimmerman, our amazing editors, put together this thing that just never changed. Then it was just the worst job of hunting people down to get releases. I can’t tell you how many letters I wrote, how many agents I hit up, like, “I need Jessica Alba’s number. I need to get to Ian McKellen. How do I do that?” So yeah, it was just kind of born of that. Then five days ago, after seeing it at San Diego Comic-Con, I started hunting down Billie Joe Armstrong’s number, and I got him, and I was just so grateful to him and to Green Day for writing that song, but also for licensing it to us because they didn’t have to, and they did. And they did it in a way that made our budget work, and I just was so thankful to them. But what’s funny about that is that he was like, “This is crazy. We are all walking out of the movie theater, me and the whole band, in DC,” because they just watched Deadpool & Wolverine.

And then you were calling him?

REYNOLDS: Yeah, it was just kismet. It was wild. But anyway, they’re so talented, and people like that who step up, like Avril Lavigne is another one, everything in the movie—Aretha Franklin, Jay Z, T.I., Madonna, and Green Day. It’s just a soundtrack that I genuinely love.

Listen, I’m a huge fan of Green Day, and that song works perfectly.

The Legacy Hideout Scene Was the Most Challenging to Get Right

When you think about the shoot, what is the shot or sequence that ended up being the biggest pain in the ass but was so worth it when you see the finished film?

REYNOLDS: I would say the hideout where we see these legacy heroes, Blade, Gambit, X-23, and Elektra, only because there was so much anxiety around it. Each of these movies has one of those scenes in it that is like a 12 or 13-page scene, and those are always the scenes that you’re asked to cut or cut down because conventional wisdom would say you can’t maintain one location or one scene for that long in these kinds of movies that are so action-driven. I’ve put them in all the movies, even Deadpool 2 has a 14-page scene where I have the baby legs. That’s a layer cake—I have people who just keep coming in and upping the ridiculousness of it, and eventually, Cable shows up.

So, I know it worked there, but I have all these unknown quantities we’re dealing with. You’ve got Wesley showing up and Channing and Jennifer and Dafne, and all these people who are going to have ideas and thoughts, and we only had them for, I think when we shot that particular scene, we had them for a day and a half. So it’s a lot to do, a lot of coverage, a lot of everything and you really also definitely want to make sure that every one of them has their moment. That was the biggest edict that Shawn and I had from the jump, and Hugh, too, really, was making sure that every one of those people, everyone one of those characters that some people have grown up watching and knowing had a wonderful moment in the movie, a moment to shine, a moment that has nothing to do with Deadpool or Wolverine. But I would say that that sequence was the one where I was definitely kind of nervy.

I don’t think people understand how little time a day and a half is on a shoot. They hear a day and a half, and it’s like, “Oh, that’s a lot of time.” The average person doesn’t understand filming that fight sequence in the car in two days… I don’t understand how you did that. I truly don’t.

REYNOLDS: I do, and I’m not just saying this to blow smoke—the most incredible crew. Alex Kyshkovych, who doubles me as Deadpool since Deadpool 1, who is a diehard Deadpool fan, as well, just coming into it with that kind of passion. George Cottle, who’s name is synonymous with Spider-Man: No Way Home, people who were organized and ready. And you cannot underestimate the power of enthusiasm. Nothing good was ever made without enthusiasm. This crew and this group of people, I would even say right down to DC, his name’s Dave, who’s our focus puller with Dogpool running toward camera on a long lens. I know that’s super technical and nerdy, but that’s a hard shot to keep sharp. You have a moving object with, like, a fucking four-foot tongue running at you that looks like this ancient shit, and you got to keep that sucker crystal-clear. I mean, that’s talent, right?

So, the whole crew—[cinematographer] George Richmond, who I have shot a few movies with all the way back to Safe House. I shot movie with his dad, Tony Richmond, who did Just Friends, and he shot Hard Day’s Night, The Beatles: Get Back, and all that back in the day. So, just working with amazing folks is how you get results like that. I can say this, too, an 11-page or 12, 13, or 14-page scene in any comic book movie, if you were to aggregate out what it would take, that would be weeks. It’s just very hard to get that much coverage, and efficiently.

I actually love it when I speak to people who really nerd out on the filming because the Collider audience, that’s what they’re interested in. It’s not just about, “It was great working with that person.” It’s like, “You can’t believe we shot with this lens on this day…” That kind of stuff.

REYNOLDS: It’s all of our passion. Shawn and I both have that same thing where we’re overly accustomed to providing feedback for people, as well. So, our legacy heroes, I probably text every one of them 100 times since San Diego with just gratitude and, like, “Did you see this reaction video?” It’s just so much fun to trade and enjoy like that with this hint of nostalgia, and also just a reminder of how legendary folks like Wesley, and certainly Channing obviously has such a breadth of work there, and Jen and Dafne. They’re just incredible actors. Incredible, iconic people, and what a privilege.

Who Is the Anchor Being of Earth-616?
Image via 20th Century Fox

Do you know who Earth-616’s anchor person is?

REYNOLDS: No. I haven’t asked. I’ve asked other questions about what’s coming, but that’s not one I’ve asked. Anchor being’s also Kevin Feige. That was a great Kevin Feige note to use that kind of device of an anchor being, and who better to hold that than Hugh in the X-Men 20th Century Fox Universe? Hugh is an anchor being in my real life. I think one of the great things about this film is it sort of documents a friendship on camera, and certainly in the movie, but it’s also authentic. I mean, with Hugh and I, the lead up, even, to the movie felt like a prelude, like a whole movie unto itself, of the promo and marketing stuff. But also, just for us, it was something we’d been looking forward to for a year and a half, knowing that we’d get to go travel all over the world and talk about this movie, but also what a lucky job we have, to constantly remind ourselves of that, being really grateful that we get to go to places like Shanghai and Seoul, Korea and Berlin and then then to Brazil, and then back to London. I mean, just unbelievable stuff.

But Hugh really is like an anchor being in my life. Hugh and Shawn are two of my closest friends. They’re my best friends, and I say that unabashedly, and they do too. Having spent 16 and a half years with Hugh, and having known Shawn for 10 years, but also feeling like he’s a creative brother of mine is something that, at my age, I’m 47 now, I know how to appreciate that. I don’t know that I would have in my 20s or even in my 30s. At 47, I know how to appreciate this moment of Deadpool & Wolverine doing what it’s doing in this crazy, historic run, whatever you want to call it. I know how to deal with those feelings in a way that’s pretty fun and pretty responsible and pretty cool, and I think Shawn and Hugh certainly do, too. We’re all very lucky to be able to be at this place in our lives to appreciate it.

I’ve got to stop. You’ve been very, very generous with your time. But I totally agree with you that it’s only when you are in this business for a while and see, really, how fickle it can be that when you have a moment like this, you really can appreciate what’s happening for you guys, and how rare it is.

REYNOLDS: It’s something I’ll never take for granted. How lucky to recognize it, too. I’ve realized I’m lucky, as well.

Deadpool & Wolverine is in theaters now. For a rewatch, hit the link below:

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