WITH DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, MARVEL IS ENTERING ITS CRAZY ERA. WILL THE X-MEN BE X-RATED? WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH DOGPOOL? AND CAN WADE WILSON AND LOGAN SAVE THE MCU? LET’S FIND OUT…

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

Pusher of buttons: Antihero Deadpool/Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is back on the up;

THE ROAD TO Deadpool & Wolverine — the movie that teams up two of Marvel’s most iconic characters, Deadpool and Wolverine — began with Deadpool (but not Wolverine) pitching a movie about Deadpool and Wolverine, but not Deadpool & Wolverine. That would come later. Much later.

Confused? So are we. But we’re in this together, so let us explain.

In 2018, Deadpool 2 is released. It’s the second (technically third — we’ll get to that later) film starring Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson aka Deadpool, a mutant mercenary who, thanks to a healing factor and a brain that Reynolds compares to a “half-eaten omelette”, has become a crazy, unpredictable, unkillable killing machine. Who, somehow, also knows, or at least believes, that he’s in a movie, and who breaks the fourth wall as easily as he breaks necks.

The movie, like the first, is a huge hit, taking in nearly $800 million worldwide. It is further vindication for Reynolds, who not only plays the title role, but co-writes and produces, and is Deadpool’s cinematic caretaker, having shepherded the character to the big screen at 20th Century Fox despite the scepticism of many a suit.

Now, though, Fox — which owned the X-Men movies and all related characters, including Deadpool — was no longer in the game. They had just been acquired by Disney, which owns Marvel Studios and therefore the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The door had apparently opened for Deadpool to join the party. But it wasn’t that simple.

“I genuinely didn’t know, a few years ago, if I would ever play Deadpool again,” Reynolds tells Empire from New York. “Disney buying Fox, at least in my perspective, put things in jeopardy.” Largely because it seemed that Marvel wanted to play the long game with the X-Men, slowly but surely introducing its own versions of the characters. New broom, sweep clean. But there’s something so indelible about Reynolds as Deadpool, casting so perfect it practically forbids anyone from following in their footsteps, that it would have been foolish for the studio not to consider its options. Which is what it did.

“I got called up to the big man, and went over there,” recalls Reynolds, “and I pitched a movie that I thought would be a great third film.”

Deadpool drives Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to drink;

“THERE WERE MANY DAYS WHEN I WENT, ‘HOLY FUCKING SHIT, THAT’S DEADPOOL!’”

SHAWN LEVY

The ‘big man’ was Kevin Feige, President (actual job title) and Numero Uno Grande Fromage (not actual job title) at Marvel Studios, and producer of every single film in the MCU since it was established in 2008. The pitch was one of those big, brassy, bold ideas that Reynolds is famous for, like ‘buy a Welsh football team with one of the dudes from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Not Danny DeVito. Repeat: NOT Danny DeVito’.

On this day, Reynolds pitched a movie in which Deadpool teamed up on screen with the most iconic of all the X-Men, a mutant with a handy healing factor and six metal claws who became a crazy, unpredictable, unkillable killing machine. He wanted Wolverine.