‘Deadpool & Wolverine’: Spoilers and secrets revealed by the screenwriter

With Deadpool now a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Disney bought Fox — the studio that owned the franchise — Reese, Wernick and Reynolds (Zeb Wells and director Shawn Levy also have screenwriting credits) had an embarrassment of riches. available for a third film. But while this led to a wealth of ideas, there were precious few that everyone felt could be turned into a full movie.

“We were kind of paralyzed because Marvel made their whole universe our oyster and we just couldn’t figure out what we wanted to do,” Reese said. “It had been four or five months. We had different stories, but we felt like we were chasing each other.”

To add more pressure, with a writers’ strike on the horizon, they began to wonder if it made more sense to put the project on hold until the labor dispute was over. But then Reynolds informed the team that Hugh Jackman had agreed to return to play Wolverine.

“Once Hugh came on board, the movie wrote itself,” Wernick said. Now there was a way.

“It’s got to be a buddy movie; it’s got to be a two-hander. We didn’t want to use Logan because we were worried about dishonoring his perfect ending, so then we realized we had to use a variation, so that brought that whole idea,” Reese said. “Things came together quickly. I think after we made those decisions, I think within about a week, we had a plan.”

The result is another box office hit in the “Deadpool” franchise. The film earned $211 million in its opening weekend, beating the first “Deadpool” to become the biggest opening ever for an R-rated film. After crossing the $500 million mark worldwide before entering its second weekend in theaters, the film is set to earn $1 billion.

Below, Business Insider spoke with Reese and Wernick about some of the biggest spoilers and secrets in “Deadpool & Wolverine.”

Ryan Reynolds did some of those *NSYNC moves in the “Bye Bye Bye” opening sequence.

In the film’s opening, Deadpool slaughters a group of Time Variance Authority officers using Wolverine’s bones from the movie “Logan” while doing the full choreography from *NSYNC’s 2000 hit “Bye Bye Bye.”

Although Reynolds has praised the talents of dancer Nick Pauley, who did most of the dancing on stage, Wernick said there are several shots of Reynolds in costume doing the moves.

“I think he did some,” he said. “But I’ve seen Ryan dance, he doesn’t dance as well as that dancer.”

A description of how Marvel characters Johnny Storm, Elektra, Blade and Gambit would fit into the film was developed before casting questions were asked.

One of the highlights of the film is seeing pre-MCU Marvel characters get one last moment to shine.

When traveling through the Void, Deadpool and Wolverine encounter Fantastic Four member Johnny Storm (aka Human Torch). He has an unexpected death, though he gets a glorious epilogue in the end credits scene (more on that in a minute). But that turns out to be just an appetizer, as later in the film, our heroes get help on Earth from Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Blade (Wesley Snipes), and Gambit (Channing Tatum).

Reese said that before the actors were asked questions, they did an outline of how the characters would fit into the film.

“It definitely starts with the story; we have the idea up front and then we approach the actor,” he said. They expect to write the scenes completely, though—that way, they don’t waste time on them if an actor declines an invitation to appear.

Thankfully, Reese said convincing the actors wasn’t too difficult. “We have the luxury of an easy inbound call to make to an actor: ‘Do you want to be in Deadpool?’

The screenwriters especially had fun developing Gambit, as Tatum’s hopes of playing the character on screen were dashed when the project was canceled following the Disney/Fox merger.

“We’ve read at least two Gambit movies,” Wernick said. “Channing has been trying to push that ball up the hill for probably as long as we’ve been trying to push Deadpool up the hill. Hopefully, this will allow him the opportunity to get his movie. We just told Channing at Comic Con we want to be the guys to write it.”

Chris Evans signed on to the film largely because of the profanity-filled end-credits scene he co-wrote with Reynolds.

Now back to Evans. According to the writers, what really excited Evans about his appearance in the film wasn’t so much playing Johnny Storm again (he played the character in the early 2000s Fox-released “Fantastic Four” films) as the achievement in go on a profanity-filled tirade in the end credits scene.

In the film, Storm dies at the hands of Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) after Deadpool tells her the names Storm called on their journey to her stronghold. The audience never sees Storm say those things, so it’s easy to believe that Deadpool is lying.

The end credit scene proves that Deadpool was telling the truth. Using a tool from TVA, Deadpool shows the audience footage inside the transport that sent Wolverine, Deadpool, and Storm to Nova, which includes Storm going all out on Nova.

“That was Ryan’s idea and it was so great because I think that’s really why Chris was willing to do the camera,” Reese said. “Ryan wrote the stream of angry insults and Chris got in a bit”.

“I think it was just a way for him to do something that he’s never been able to do in a Marvel movie,” Wernick added.

Reynolds came up with the Hugh Jackman divorce joke.

Deadpool likes to get under people’s skin, and that includes spouting one-liners. One of the more brutal ones is directed at Wolverine: “He’s usually shirtless, but he’s been letting himself go since the divorce.” It’s a cheeky reference to Hugh Jackman’s split from his wife of 27 years, Deborra-Lee Furness.

Reese and Wernick want to make it clear that they don’t know Jackman well enough to write such a joke.

“That wasn’t ours,” Reese said. “We never in a million years would have thought to write that line. That line comes as a function of Ryan and Hugh’s relationship and their comfort level.”

This isn’t the first time a movie they’ve written has featured a reveal line they didn’t write themselves.

In the 2009 film Zombieland, after Bill Murray has been shot, he is asked if he has any regrets and he replies, “Garfield, maybe,” referring to his role voicing the character in the 2004 box office bust .It turns out it was an impromptu response.

“Bill Murray himself made fun of ‘Garfield’ when he improvised a reaction to a line we wrote for him,” Reese said. “We never would have thought to do that — he did it. It’s about the person’s comfort level and wanting to make fun of their situation and their life.”

Reynolds originally wanted Deadpool to fight zombies and Marvel villain Mephisto.

A key moment in the film is the final fight sequence, when Deadpool and Wolverine face off against all the variants of Deadpool that were in the Void, including Ladypool (voiced by Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively).

As Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” plays, Deadpool and Wolverine fight off a seemingly endless onslaught of Deadpool variants in a long shot known in Hollywood as an “oner.”

The screenwriters said this sequence has been on Reynolds’ mind for years.

“When he first picked up the phone in ‘Deadpool 3’ to contact us, I think it was late 2021, his original vision was zombies, that it was Deadpool in a smaller zombie war,” Reese said. .

Also? The fight would be fought in Hell.

“We had a fair number of versions where it was like Deadpool goes to Hell, where this character Mephisto was our villain,” Reese said, referring to a character from Marvel comics who oversees a version of Hell. “He would fight through these infernal demons for ‘Like a Prayer’.”

Mephisto’s plot was eventually scrapped, but Reynolds’ quest to make a part of “Like a Prayer” continued.

“That was something that lived in his head,” Wernick said. “God bless him, he got it.”