HOW THE CAMEO-STACKED “DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE” CARVES OUT A NEW FUTURE FOR MARVEL'S MUTANTS

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman reflect on the long, bumpy road to finally give fans what they crave: a proper team-up of their X-Men heroes.

Ryan Reynolds is still apologizing for his first collaboration with Hugh Jackman. He says so with his signature on-the-fly, dry brand of humor that typically comes with a subtle smirk. You think he's joking, but he could be semi-serious. Considering the film in question is X-Men Origins: Wolverine — the first onscreen union of Reynolds' katana-wielding mercenary Deadpool and Jackman's adamantium-clawed berzerker Logan, which was widely derided by fans and critics alike — it's probably the latter. 

The actors have been poking fun at the 2009 superhero flick for years, often as part of their fake online "feud" (which itself stemmed from their dream of making another Deadpool and Wolverine movie) or their dueling self-aware marketing campaigns for Reynolds' Aviation Gin and Jackman's Laughing Man Coffee. There's even a post-credits scene in 2018's Deadpool 2 in which Reynolds' titular merc goes back in time to murder his performance in Origins, thereby erasing it from the annals of history.

They clearly have fun with the discourse. But in a moment of earnestness, Reynolds reveals his true feelings about their Origins story: "There's a lot of misfires that have nothing to do with the core creative team, that are more studio mandates," he tells Entertainment Weekly. "I actually think there's a lot of good things."

One of those good things was meeting Jackman. Sitting across from each other at New York City's Four Seasons in downtown Manhattan in mid-May, the pair recall their first encounter in 2008. Reynolds, known at the time for raunchy comedies such as Just Friends and Waiting…, had previously appeared in Marvel Comics adaptation Blade: Trinity when he was set to debut as Wade Wilson/Deadpool. Landing that morning after a red-eye flight, he fought off fatigue for the Origins night shoot happening hours later. One planned sequence involved Wade emerging from an elevator to cut down a hailfire of bullets with laser-precise sword cuts.

Remembering this day on set, Reynolds rests his head on his hand, with his fingers pressed against his temple, perhaps subconsciously imitating a different X-Men figure, Patrick Stewart's mind-reading Charles Xavier. "We finished the day. Everyone was taking all their crap off and getting ready to go back to their hotels. I just, in a cursory sense, said, 'I wish I had another crack at that elevator scene that we shot earlier today.' I'm realizing what I could have done, the jetlag is wearing off, and I'm starting to see it." He points to Jackman. "This guy just fired up the lights in there, asked everyone to hop in the elevator," the 47-year-old continues. "Their willingness to come back is what really spoke volumes about Hugh. There was not even a moment's hesitation. Every single one of them — including the crew, lighting, everything — hopped to it."

Jackman, 55, responds that he learned from Reynolds, too: "I see it in full bloom. His creative mind never stops and the ideas just keep coming."

The pair have been trying to get a proper big-screen team-up of their superhero characters ever since. After years of pitch meetings, a big corporate merger, and ejecting Jackman out of the X-Men retirement home, it's finally happening with a film named… well, Deadpool & Wolverine. "For me, it's wish fulfillment," Reynolds says. "It's not a secret. This pairing has been something I've dreamt about for as long as I can remember."

"The thing I've learned from Ryan is that anticipation of these two characters within this universe: The moment Deadpool came out, I was just bombarded with, 'When is this movie happening?! It's got to happen!'" Jackson adds before turning to his costar. "There is also the zeitgeist of you and me that exists. The actual onscreen story has to deliver in deeper, wider, more fulfilling ways than what you can imagine."

Director Shawn Levy, who first worked with Jackman on 2011's Real Steel and Reynolds on 2021's Free Guy and 2022's The Adam Project, is acutely aware of the immense history that comes with Deadpool and Wolverine — not just with his stars, but the characters' own histories in Hollywood. "In some ways, the movie is about these legacies," he says, speaking to EW a few days after our date with his stars. "That acknowledgment of legacy informs the themes and story itself within the movie."

Into the Marvel-verse

Legacy was also top of mind for Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige, and why wouldn't it be? He's been there since the beginning. Before becoming one of the most powerful figures in all of Hollywood, Feige first met Jackman in 1999 as a low-level producer's assistant on the set of X-Men, the monumental film that introduced heroes including Cyclops, Storm, and Jean Grey to the big screen and inspired decades of superhero movie-making. At the behest of 20th Century Fox, which owned the film rights to Marvel's mutants, Jackman flew to Toronto to audition for the lead role of Wolverine.

What happened next has since become one of the more famous stories in the industry: Dougray Scott had already landed the role of Wolverine. But, unbeknownst to Jackman, the actor's schedule with Mission: Impossible 2 would eventually pull him away entirely, forcing a last-minute recast after filming was underway. (Scott later told The Telegraph in 2020 that Tom Cruise wouldn’t let him do both movies and mandated he "stay and finish the film.") It seemed like nobody wanted Jackman there, either. He remembers reading lines for Bryan Singer in the director's trailer with screenwriter Tom DeSanto acting decidedly nonplussed over in the corner. "He's just going, 'Quiet… Quieter… Quieter.' By the end, I couldn't even hear myself," Jackman says of DeSanto. "I could tell he was like, Why on my lunch hour am I auditioning some guy for a part that I've already cast? He was pissed off."

But further behind the scenes, "there was a scramble to get our Wolverine," Feige says. "Lauren [Shuler Donner, his boss,] was very excited about this Australian guy, who had been rejected initially. In my memory, one of the main reasons was that he was too tall." (Jackman is 6 foot 3.) "Wolverine in the comics is called 'Lil' Fireplugs' sometimes. He's a short guy. But they were desperate." 

Jackman left that audition deflated, convinced he was never getting the part. However, instead of driving him directly back to the Toronto airport, Feige offered to first take him out for a meal with the screenwriter. ("I didn't want to just send him out into the cold!") "I said, 'Kevin, we all know I'm not getting the part. You don't have to do dinner,'" Jackman recalls. "But no, he sat in there and had a steak dinner with me and then drove me to the airport. I'll never forget it. That was the nicest thing. I thought, I'll never see him again."

Not only did Jackman land the career-defining role, but he would definitely see Feige again. The years went by and Fox continued its series of interconnected X-Men movies, including two headlining Deadpool films starring Reynolds and a total of nine Wolverine appearances by Jackman. Through it all, a reunion for their characters never left Reynolds' mind. You can see it on screen: 2016's Deadpool and 2018's Deadpool 2, both rated R for the character's foulmouthed antics, are riddled with self-referential fourth-wall-breaking jokes about the merc's ferocious better half. The actor even shot a Deadpool-themed short film, No Good Deed, that screened in theaters in front of showings of 2017's Logan, which Jackman designed as his Wolverine swan song.

Meanwhile, Feige swiftly rose up the ranks to lead one of the biggest entertainment juggernauts ever, Marvel Studios, now owned by Disney. The Marvel Cinematic Universe became a household name itself, boosting the careers of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, and the like. But Fox still owned the rights to use certain Marvel Comics characters, including both Deadpool and Wolverine — that is, until 2019.

Disney got so big that the company purchased Fox, including all the rights to those X-Men characters. It seemed like things were looking up for Marvel's kinky odd couple. Publicly, Reynolds posted a photo to social media of his Deadpool on a school bus sporting Mickey Mouse ears. ("Feels like the first day of 'Pool," read the caption.) Privately, he pitched to Feige his first of what would amount to about 18 ideas for a third Deadpool movie with Wolvie in it. "I sat with Kevin, but at the time, it was just not even possible," he says.

"I don't want to get into corporate acquisition legal laws or whatever. I don't understand them, but there's a lot of 'em," Feige remarks. "It took a long time between whenever [the acquisition] was announced to it all getting done, so [the characters] weren't really in our sandbox for a very long time after that first announcement happened."

"I didn't know if I'd ever be playing Deadpool again," Reynolds admits. "It's not something I would've said necessarily publicly, but I didn't know how a character like that would fit into that world [of the MCU]."

It really wasn't until a few short years ago that Disney could actually play with many of its new toys. Patrick Stewart came back as Professor Charles Xavier, a role he portrayed opposite Jackman many times in the Fox-owned X-Men movies, for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (2022); the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel (2022) incorporated the term “mutant” for the first time in the MCU; and Kelsey Grammer most recently returned as his X-Men character Beast in The Marvels (2023). And now Deadpool & Wolverine will be a formal introduction to mutantkind in this new connected multiverse.

"The notion that, all these years later, we're in a world where [Jackman] is Wolverine, and Deadpool and all of those X-Men characters are together under the same roof, is a pretty amazing quarter-of-a-century experience," Feige comments.

Assembling a team

Reynolds was overflowing with ideas for a third Deadpool. He describes one treatment as "a Rashomon story that had these three different points of view." The most divergent concept was more of a Sundance indie film. "Literally, it was a $5 or $6 million budget with no special effects. It was just a talkie-talkie road trip with me and [Karan Soni's character] Dopinder and some of the things we collected and saw along the way. It wasn't meant to be an event movie. If we're on our way to Point C, it was meant to just get us to Point B. That was the weirdest one. I liked it. I thought it was kind of fun."

A crucial piece of the puzzle was Levy — another friend from work. His longtime pal Jackman was the one who suggested the filmmaker work with Reynolds, which led to Free Guy and The Adam Project, and then to Reynolds declaring he wants to make all his future movies with Levy. Not all friends are capable of working with each other successfully, but this trio meshes well, with similar irreverent humor. "I wonder if we benefited from meeting at a stage of life where we'd all proven we deserve to be at the party," Levy, 55, thinks aloud. "No one met in their early 20s where we're all just scrapping it out for a seat at the table. We met with seats at the table in our 30s, in our 40s. I think there was a confidence each of us brought to these relationships."

It was on The Adam Project when Reynolds first brought up Deadpool 3 to Levy. It wasn't so much that the director didn't want to do it, but historically his résumé is light on sequels (Night at the Museum, Cheaper by the Dozen) and heavy on original storytelling (Date Night, This Is Where I Leave You, The Internship). "I get offered some IP-based movie every week, and, as you've noticed from a lack of announcements, I pretty much always turn them down because I need to feel that I see a story worth telling," he says. The closest he came to directing a superhero movie was The Flash, starring Ezra Miller, though he says that was "a brief moment in time." (After EW spoke with Levy, it was revealed he's in consideration to direct the fifth Avengers movie for Marvel.)

Once Jackman was on the table, everything changed. It was just about getting him there. Fortunately, the actor was already starting to regret hanging up his claws. "From the moment I saw Deadpool 2… I had literally announced maybe a couple of weeks before that Logan was going to be my last, and I remember watching it and I'm 15 minutes in going, 'F---!' I could feel it." What happened next is a story Jackman has told multiple times over: He got an epiphany while driving with his two kids in the backseat. 

"An epiphany masquerading as a midlife crisis," Reynolds cracks of his friend. Whatever it is, Jackman says, "I've learned to obey them, trust them. You never really know which way they're going to take you." Jackman didn't waste any time, calling up Reynolds to say Deadpool and Wolverine should ride again. The rest is history. "With the character of Wade, especially in combination with the character of Logan, I saw that story beyond the franchise value," Levy says.

Mutant mayhem

Everyone is keeping mum on the specific story Reynolds and Levy cooked up with Rhett Reese (a writer and executive producer of the past two Deadpools). They want to preserve the fun. Though, the filmmaker likens Deadpool & Wolverine to earlier Marvel movies in that “the character stakes are more important than the global MCU stakes.”

What we know for certain is that the film takes place six years after the events of Deadpool 2. Wade has hung up his uniform, he's no longer dating Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), and he seems content (perhaps in a depressed way) to work as a used car salesman. While celebrating his birthday with pals from the previous two films — including Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) — agents of the Time Variance Authority (the multiverse watchdog organization first introduced in Loki) pluck Wade out of his reality and bring him to meet their boss, Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), who informs Deadpool that there's a bigger fate in store for him.

What that fate is exactly is anyone's guess. And the fans have indeed been guessing. But we know it involves setting Wade on a collision course with an alternate reality version of Wolverine who's still played by Jackman but is not the same character as the one from the past X-Men movies. "You have Wade Wilson, who is like an impetuous motormouth child in a superheroic man's body, and you have the laconic, largely nonverbal, gruff Logan. On the surface, they're completely different, which is what makes them a perfect comedic duo," Levy remarks. "But they're both haunted by regret, and there's a darkness and a sadness and ultimately a solitude to both these heroes that also makes them anti-heroes."

We also know the story involves Cassandra Nova, played by The Crown Emmy nominee Emma Corrin, who sports a bald cap and long fingernails to play the duo's psychic adversary with a complicated comic book history. (*Pushes up glasses* She's not technically Xavier's twin, but rather an alien parasite that appeared to Xavier in utero and formed into his polar opposite.) As Corrin recalls, "Ryan and Shawn pitched this idea, which I was totally on board with: 'We want this villain to not be a villain in the sense that you expect them to be. We want you to be so endeared by her, so charmed by her, and just when you think that maybe she's totally seen into your soul and you are going to be best friends for life, you're dead.'"

An image Corrin conjured was Willy Wonka icon Gene Wilder. "They wanted her to be unpredictable," says the actor, who uses they/them pronouns. A reference Reynolds and Levy had in mind was Christoph Waltz from Inglourious Basterds. "He's so disarmingly polite and nice and unaffected, and it's really creepy," Corrin explains. "It's all the more sinister because he doesn't need to do anything.”

Plenty of other characters will be popping up in Deadpool & Wolverine. Loads more! And some of them will be self-aware call-outs to the history of the Fox X-Men movies. (Note the crumbling 20th Century Fox logo in the trailers.) It's just that Reynolds, Jackman, and Levy are not commenting on any of them, even after paparazzi released photos from the set that heavily suggested certain X-Men movie characters would return. "We didn't want any of the cameos or characters to be the story of the movie," Levy explains. "But they are peppered in throughout. There's a lot of characters. The internet is a delight of rumors about the multitude of character cameos that are in this movie. Some rumors are true, some are way off base."

The rumors have ranged from Taylor Swift (which EW has debunked) to Jennifer Garner's Elektra (which was reported in the Hollywood trades) to smaller X figures like Toad. Marvel recently confirmed the inclusion of Sabretooth, Wolverine's most famous adversary from the very first X-Men movie. And if you scrutinize the background of EW's exclusive photo (above) of Corrin's Cassandra Nova, there's a strong indicator that Lady Deathstrike, a mutant with long adamantium fingernails who was played by Kelly Hu in X2: X-Men United, will be coming back for this new movie. If that's the case, you won't hear it from the film's core trio. What Levy does tease is this: "Wade himself is a fan. Without giving anything away about the various universes the different characters live in…. Because he's in some ways a fawning motormouthed little fanboy himself, it allows the movie to call out and reference a ton of deep-cut Marvel references."

Aaron Stanford is the only one of Deadpool and Wolverine's X-es who can actually talk about his involvement. In an early trailer, he was revealed to be returning as Pyro, the fire-manipulating mutant from X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. 

"I was just very happy to even have a costume," Stanford says of his character's new look, which features Pyro's notable goggles from the comics. "In the original X-Men films, Pyro gets really shortchanged in terms of a costume. In X2, we start off with Pyro in Xavier's School for Gifted Mutants. The SWAT team bursts in in the middle of the night and we have to flee. So for half the movie, I'm in my jammies. I never got the cool leather, tactical suit that all the X-Men wear. And in X3, I was just dressed in an ensemble from Hot Topic, basically. So to have him be in a proper superhero costume that was actually taken from the comics themselves was very cool."

Levy acknowledges the amount of anticipation "creates spoiler anxiety" that keeps him up at night. "But it also keeps me rigorously focused on the highest standards for this movie, because it brings the highest expectations," he adds. "With a movie like this, where people seem to be letting us know they intend to show up, I want to make sure that we build the most joyous, rollicking good time in the theaters that we possibly could."

There are indeed a lot of expectations for this film: It marks the MCU's first R-rated foray (which Feige says was always the mission from the jump); it's the only MCU film releasing in theaters this year; and, after a few "misfires" at the box office with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels, people are wondering if Deadpool & Wolverine will be the cure for "superhero fatigue." Levy agrees, "Marvel had some misses," but believes "people are way too quick to declare the last rites of the superhero genre. I don't buy into that fatigue narrative."

It's unclear if Reynolds and Jackman will make more Marvel movies with Disney after this, but press has already reported an X-Men movie is in development for this particular universe. Feige declines to comment on this beyond what he's already said, "which is, July 26 is really when it all starts, when Deadpool & Wolverine comes out."

Reynolds and Jackman continue to bask in the glow of their union instead of worrying too much about what is or isn't in their Marvel futures. They're already looking to work together again on something that doesn't even involve superheroes. "We have one we're looking to do soon," Reynolds teases of their next project. "I would say that [ours] is like any relationship that is successful and works: It's that two parties are rooting for each other. I'm always rooting for Hugh to score and win. I also know the infinite nuance of his heart and his mind and who he is. I can say firsthand that he's a person who's not just worth rooting for, he's somebody who's impossible to not root for."

The same can be said of Deadpool and Wolverine. They just go together, as the actors often say, like "ketchup and mustard."

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.

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