Marvel's Kevin Feige Kept Turning Down DEADPOOL 3 Pitches Until Hugh Jackman Got Involved
Had Hugh Jackman not come out of Wolverine retirement for Deadpool, we might have never seen a third Deadpool movie get made because Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige kept turning down the story pitches being made by Ryan Reynolds and Shawn Levy.
During a recent appearance at a Deadpool & Wolverine event in Shanghai, China, Reynolds explained: "I had met Kevin Feige six years ago to discuss this, and the first thing I said to him, 'I just want to make Wolverine and Deadpool together. I just want these two together on screen.'
“At the time, Kevin said, 'Forget it. It's never going to happen,' and I said, 'Okay, that's fine.' As we marched inexorably forward, Shawn and I were coming up with different pitches and different ideas, and we pitched Marvel everything you could imagine — little movies, big movies, anything — and it wasn't working out."
There came a point where Reynolds and Levy were going to give up pitching Marvel for awhile, but then Jackman called.
Reynolds said: "And then one day, we were on our last pitch. We were about to say to Kevin Feige, 'I think we're going to walk away and we'll come back later, maybe in a couple years, when we have a better sense of things.' And Hugh happened to call me."
Jackman told Reynolds that, if it wasn't too late, he wanted to come back and be a part of the third Deadpool film. This is what finally sold Feige on the film, and Feige had one condition.
The actor continued: "Shawn and I just pivoted in the middle of our pitch to Kevin and said, 'Look, this thing just happened. It seems kind of miraculous. Hugh called me, what do you say?' And for some reason, Kevin immediately said yes."
Levy added: "He said, 'Yes, but he wears the yellow. Can he finally wear the yellow?' And we began."
Reynolds previously revealed that he had written 18 different treatments for Deadpool 3. Even after Hugh Jackman came on board, Feige “wasn’t even sure how to incorporate Deadpool yet.”
Some of the treatments were developed as “almost like a Sundance film, a budget of under $10 million, sort of using the IP in a way that they previously hadn’t used, and I pitched bigger movies, and I pitched things in-between.”
Reynolds previously shared one of the early plans for Deadpool 3, saying: "Literally, it was a $5 or $6 million budget with no special effects. It was just a talkie-talkie road trip with me and [Karan Soni's character] Dopinder and some of the things we collected and saw along the way."
He added: "It wasn't meant to be an event movie. If we're on our way to Point C, it was meant to just get us to Point B. That was the weirdest one. I liked it. I thought it was kind of fun."
The third Deadpool movie may have gone through a rough time finally getting into the production stage, but Reynolds, Levy, and Jackman managed to make the movie and we’ll all get to experience it on the big screen on July 26th!
Via: CB