DEADPOOL Writers Talk About The Sequel: "We Don't Want To Blow This Next One Out"
For years, fans couldn't stop talking about how much they wanted to see a Deadpool movie. But now, almost a week after the film finally hit theaters, attention has already shifted to the sequel. Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick spoke with Collider about the upcoming movie, which doesn't have a release date yet but is well underway.
First up, they spoke about how just because they teased the inclusion of Cable in the post-credits scene, that doesn't mean the new movie is going to suddenly get packed with other comic characters:
Reese: I think there’s a real conceptual difference between taking other characters and big things and bringing them into Deadpool’s reasonably small, gritty world and the opposite, taking Deadpool and placing him among big ensembles who are fighting aliens or in the future where he and Cable are doing something in the future.
I think if Cable and Deadpool team up, it will likely be in Deadpool’s world. That allows us to control that budgetary thing a little more; I don’t think we’re gonna see Deadpool and Cable on some far-flung planet 300 years from now because I just feel like that’s gonna be expensive, A, and will also take away from the relatability of Deadpool. I think at this stage in the game it’s about taking other people and dropping them into this reasonably insular, gritty, urban, dark world of Deadpool.
Wernick chimed in to clarify that they are looking to stay around the same budget they had the first time around:
We don’t want $150 million to go make the next movie, that’s not Deadpool. Deadpool doesn’t lift cities up into the air or battle aliens coming down to earth, that’s just not Deadpool. So we’re happy in that little small budget range that they have us in; we don’t wanna blow this next one out.
A quick note: The outlet points out that this interview was conducted before the movie blew away all expectations at the box office, so while there is actually a chance that Fox wants to up the ante on the sequel now, it sounds like that wouldn't really align with the writers' approach to the story.
The writers also commented on how they've been looking over a list of possible characters that they could include, while it's mostly fallen on producer Simon Kinberg to figure out where Deadpool fits in the complicated timeline of X-Men movies:
“It’s a legal list but it’s also a creative list, because X-Men: Apocalypse has plans, they have plans for future X-Men movies, and we also have timeline issues. We have actors who are now playing the parts who are a younger generation, we have the older actors—where does Deadpool’s timeline fit in with the others? These are all things that Simon Kinberg worries about for the moment instead of us. Colossus was easy to do because he’s chrome and there was no live-action actor playing him, Negasonic was easy to do because she’s a very minor character, but if you start talking about Professor X or Beast you do start running into timeline issues and we’re gonna need guidelines on that.”
I did appreciate the small scale of the movie — even though it ended with the CGI destruction of a ridiculously impractical location, at least it didn't involve Deadpool having to save the entire world or a blue light shooting up into the sky. I'll leave you with this tweet from Nicholas Hoult, who plays Beast in the X-Men films, and who hilariously responded to the movie's reference to his character:
