Actor Ryan Reynolds explains that big budgets can harm a movie’s quality, and that Deadpool’s low budget ended up being a benefit to the franchise.
Ryan Reynolds said that having a smaller budget than a typical superhero movie was a blessing in disguise when making Deadpool in 2016 and Deadpool 2 in 2018.
Reynolds was profiled in Forbes magazine regarding his advertising ventures, MNTN and Maximum Effort. During the interview he talked about how the lower budget on the Deadpool films was actually a help to the franchise. “I really had a crash course in the value of marketing and storytelling in this context through Deadpool,” Reynolds explained. “Deadpool taught me that necessity is the mother of invention. Deadpool, the franchise, never had the kind of budgets and finances to work with that some of the larger comic book properties did. Two of the greatest adversaries to creativity is too much time and too much money. I learned the value of character over spectacle through Deadpool.”
Reynolds not only starred in the two Deadpool films, he championed their creation. Reynolds famously wanted to portray the Merc with a Mouth for years, and even played a different version of him in the widely panned X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Still, he wanted to do a standalone film with the character and begged Fox to do a Deadpool film for years even before he was cast in the Green Lantern film. Reynolds explained, “They said, ‘Unfortunately, we can’t green-light that movie, and I don’t think it’s ever going to get green-lit.’ So I was like, Okay, I’m gonna go move on with my life, then, I guess.”
That wasn’t the end of Reynolds’ desire to make a standalone Deadpool movie, though. On the same day that Green Lantern debuted in theaters, Reynolds shot the now infamous test footage of what a Deadpool film would look like. While Fox CEO Tim Rothman was unimpressed with the test footage, it ended up leaked online, where it made enough of an impact for Fox to greenlight the project months later.
After Reynolds appeared as Deadpool opposite Taika Waititi as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Korg in a promotional spot for the movie Free Guy, Reynolds confirmed that this meant the character was now part of the MCU. Furthermore, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige confirmed, after Disney secured the rights to the character, that a third Deadpool film is in the works and will be a part of the MCU. He also revealed that Deadpool 3 will keep the franchise’s R-rating, which will make it the first R-rated film in the MCU. Shawn Levy, director of Reynolds two recent projects Free Guy and The Adam Project, will be directing the third Deadpool film.
