Ryan Reynolds’s performance as Wade Wilson (pre-Deadpool) in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) was well received, but when his character went through the Weapon XI transformation, audiences vehemently rejected the way director Gavid Hood and 20th Century Fox depicted him. Even so, the studio knew the character had potential and had Reynolds signed up for a spin-off film. A year later, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were hired to pen a script, but after Green Lantern (2011) was ripped to shreds by critics and most moviegoers, Fox wasn’t confident about making a Deadpool movie that would surely be R-rated based on the script Reese and Wernick turned in — which contained lots of profanity, gory violence, and nudity.
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While the script collected dust at the studio, Reese, Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds never gave up on getting a green-light and went back every so often to refine the script. However, for the sequel, Reese and Wernick won’t have that luxury, but they’re not sweating it.
So what’s the latest on their Deadpool 2 script? “We’re very close to a draft that we’ll go off and shoot in a couple of months and we couldn’t be more thrilled,” Wernick told The Hollywood Reporter, while doing press for their new film Life.
The film is expected to hit theaters in 2018, but no release date is set in stone at this time. Does the lack of a released date take pressure off of them? “We don’t want to put the cart before the horse, and often times with release dates that happens,” Reese offered. “You end up racing and you end up being forced to do something you’re not happy with and the great thing about Deadpool is we spent a career trying to duck other movies. ‘How do we get off the release date of this or that?’ I think in most cases, people are going to have to duck us. Fox is probably going to be able to drop that thing on a date and everyone else is going to scatter, because no one will want to come out the same weekend … our feeling is it’s all about the movie. The fact that Deadpool came out in February and did as well as it did, and you are seeing similarly the summer [movie season] start earlier in March, and movies succeed in October and so the date to us doesn’t mean as much as it used to. I think the studio feels the same way. We just want to make the best movie possible and Deadpool will find an audience, we feel at this point.”
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The Deadpool sequel, which is being directed by David Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde) and written by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, is currently in pre-production and is expected to begin filming at the end of this spring. The film will introduce Deadpool’s time-traveling mutant partner, Cable, as well as X-Force member Domino, who is being portrayed by Atlanta actress Zazie Beetz. Supporting charactersfrom the original film — such as Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and taxi driver Dopinder (Karan Soni) — are also expected to return.
Deadpool 2 will arrive in theater in 2018.
