Deadpool & Wolverine: Ryan Reynolds Confirms Marvel Movie Has Last-Minute Title Change

Deadpool & Wolverine is on pace to become one of Marvel’s biggest opening weekends in years, in no small part due to the inclusion of Hugh Jackman’s beloved X-Men character. According to stars Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds, though, the movie was almost called something else. In a riff on the naming convention of “[Character] and Friends,” apparently the original draft of Deadpool 3 was called Deadpool and Friend. It’s a name that apparently stuck, to the point where they had to scramble to convince Marvel to change it at the last minute after the title leaked and feedback was strongly negative.

The revelation came in an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where Jackman interviewed Reynolds for 25 minutes, booting the host off of his own set. At one point, Jackman joked that the movie was almost called Wolverine & Deadpool, but Reynolds took the cue to tell his story.

“That was not the original title,” Reynolds said. “The movie was originally called Deadpool and Friend. I am actually not joking. On the eve of the Super Bowl — and the Super Bowl is where we first launched the trailer for ‘Deadpool and…’ not Friend but Wolverine — it leaked, because the son-of-a-bitches on the internet. The title leaked and we looked at it and listened, and they f–ing hated that title, and we were not feeling so good about that anymore. It went with the trailer that we were showing; it was kind of a perfect title for the first piece of materials that we had out there. So, Shawn Levy — director extraordinaire, friend to both of us, literally one of our best friends in the whole wide world — he and I had been sitting in the edit booth for months at this point, and we called everybody at Disney and Marvel, and said ‘We have to change the f–ing title,’ and they were like ‘Well, guys, it launches tomorrow. We’ve shipped 9,000 7’ standees to theaters all over the place that say Deadpool & Friend.’ But they’d done this to us the whole way, every time we asked them for something. When we asked if we could get Wolverine in the movie, they were like, ‘no, you can’t have Wolverine, that’s crazy.’ You had to push them on everything. And so we just wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

In Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) will change the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). The film also stars Matthew Macfadyen as Paradox, and Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, with the return of Deadpool alums Morena Baccarin as Vanessa Carlysle, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Karan Soni as Dopinder, Stefan Kapičić as Piotr Rasputin/Colossus, Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Rob Delaney as Peter, and Lewis Tan as Shatterstar. Aaron Stanford is returning as Pyro from the X-Men film series, with Jennifer Garner rumored to return as Elektra Natchios. 

Kevin Feige, Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy and Lauren Shuler Donner produce with Louis D’Esposito, Wendy Jacobson, Mary McLaglen, Josh McLaglen, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, George Dewey and Simon Kinberg serving as executive producers. Deadpool & Wolverine is written by Ryan Reynolds & Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick & Zeb Wells & Shawn Levy. Deadpool & Wolverine will be released exclusively in theaters on July 26th.