“Welcome to the MCU. You’re joining at a bit of a low point,” Ryan Reynolds’ fourth wall-breaking Merc with a Mouth quips about Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine return in Deadpool & Wolverine. But for director Shawn Levy, assembling the heroes of franchises past — including Gambit (Channing Tatum), Blade (Wesley Snipes), and Elektra (Jennifer Garner), whose surprise cameos are officially out of the bag — was a high point. With the R-rated Marvel Studios movie about to cross the $1 billion mark at the global box office, Levy is sharing a series of behind-the-scenes images from the set.
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“Kid in a candy store doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Levy wrote on Instagram with a photo of Tatum, Snipes, and Garner on set with Dafne Keen’s X-23. “These four heroes flew over to England a week in advance of shooting just to nail down all of their fight choreography. The day before they were supposed to film, our industry shut down with an actor’s strike and everyone went home. These four pals came back as soon as shooting resumed and delivered at a level you all now know.”
“Honored to bring these characters to the big screen, and lucky to call them friends,” Levy’s post continues.
Levy also shared a POV of the trio snapped before their big entrance in the Void, writing: “When THIS is what you see right before you call ‘Action’??”
A number of familiar faces from Fox-era Marvel movies returned for the film including Chris Evans as Johnny Storm/Human Torch (from 2005’s Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer), Aaron Stanford as Pyro (from 2003’s X2 and 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand), and Tyler Mane as Sabretooth (from 2000’s X-Men).
While in the Void, a multiversal menagerie of character cameos saw appearances by variant versions of X-Men‘s Toad (Daniel Medina Ramos), Azazel (Eduardo Gago Munoz), Lady Deathstrike (Jade Lye), the Blob (Mike Waters), Psylocke (Ayesha Hussain), and the Juggernaut (Aaron W. Reed), The Punisher‘s Russian (Billy Clements), and Daredevil‘s Bullseye (Curtis Small).
Watch ComicBook’s exclusive interview with Keen, who breaks down returning as X-23/Laura Kinney for the first time since 2017’s Logan, working with a method Snipes, how Tatum’s Cajun-accented Gambit caused bloopers on set, and intel on her future as the razor-clawed mutant.
