[This story contains spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine.]
Before Robert Downey Jr.’s return to Marvel as Doctor Doom, the Deadpool & Wolverine team toyed with bringing him back — as Tony Stark.
“There is a script. We have the Downey draft,” confirms co-writer Paul Wernick of the scene, a version of which ended up in the finished movie (but without Downey).
In the scene audiences see in theaters, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) travels to Avengers Tower in 2018 to meet with Happy Hogan (Iron Man director Jon Favreau). Wade asks to join The Avengers, and inquires if Stark will be joining them for the interview, before Happy ultimately rejects him from the team.
But in an earlier draft of the scene that Reynolds wrote, Tony and Happy appear together. The Deadpool & Wolverine team reasoned that if Downey declined the cameo, or if Marvel nixed it, they could always rework the Avengers Tower scene for Happy alone.
“Jon was amazing about it. He hung in there while it was still undetermined for a little while, and then ultimately was very gracious about having it expand out,” says writer Rhett Reese of Favreau taking on more work once it became clear Downey wouldn’t be involved. “We did love the idea of Tony Stark being in there, but we also perfectly understand why it didn’t happen, given that Downey jumped up on stage (at Comic-Con) and became Dr. Doom not 10 seconds after our movie came out.”
Downey became one the highest paid movie stars in the world playing Iron Man, and retired the role after 11 years in Avengers: Endgame (2019). At San Diego Comic-Con last month, Downey appeared on stage in a stunning surprise: he will be back for a pair of Avengers movies as antagonist Victor Von Doom.
While Deadpool & Wolverine’s Downey moment did not happen, the film has brought in multi-verse’s worth of characters (and money at the box office). It is expected to cross the $1 billion mark over the weekend, marking a high point for Reese and Wernick, who first joined the Deadpool universe in 2009, and spent six years with Reynolds attempting to get the first movie off the ground.
Basking in the glow of the response to the new movie, Reese and Wernick, who wrote the script with Reynolds, director Shawn Levy and Zeb Wells, spoke to THR about some of the big swings they took — as well as paths they ultimately abandoned (Deadpool vs. Zombies!?).
You guys and Ryan banged your heads against the wall trying to crack this movie for awhile, and then Hugh Jackman called up Ryan and said he wanted to un-retire as Wolverine. What from your pre-Hugh scripts stayed, and what suddenly snapped into place once Hugh joined?
Rhett Reese: We certainly had elements before Hugh came on, and one of them was Wade’s birthday party at the beginning, and the fact that Wade was lost and was working at DriveMax. The Johnny Storm/Captain America a bit was something Paul pitched in a previous version that we all just knew we needed to have in the movie. But Hugh just unlocked a lot for us. In a way, he didn’t unlock, as much as he did lock a lot of other doors. We were looking down the doors thinking, “Could it be that? Could it be that? Could it be that?” But once Hugh signed on, all those other doors got locked, and we pursued the Hugh path. It allowed us to focus, it allowed us to narrow our scope, and it allowed us to decide what we were going to do. We didn’t want to use the dead Logan, so we thought we either had to do time travel or we had to use a variant. We didn’t want to do time travel, so now we’re on the variant path. that answered some questions. We wanted it to be a road movie, a buddy movie, in a car. So we wanted to a quest across some space. So thought, what about the Void? All these things started to fall into place, and literally within about a week-and-a-half, we had a rough outline for the movie.
When Hugh came back two years ago, the PR line was, “We’re not going to step on Logan” or desecrate it, so to speak. And then early in the movie, Wade is literally digging up Logan’s grave. Was that a meta-commentary on your own PR strategy?
Paul Wernick: It was. We knew as soon as he was announced, there was going to be kickback. “Oh, you’re going to fuck Logan up.” Out of respect to Hugh and also the fans, we wanted to find another variant other than the Logan who died so heroically in Logan. Deadpool’s such a shit, disturber, right? He comes out and says, “Look, we’re not going to mess with Logan at all.” And then we thought, how perfect. Of course, Deadpool breaks all the rules, right? What fun if we cut right to North Dakota.
Reese: Ryan wanted to hit it head on, and we just thought, why not hit it head on? Let’s go ahead and take the bullet. Right? No pun intended in the first scene.
Was the concept of an anchor being something that came along with Hugh?
Wernick: We would zoom. It was us and Ryan at the start. Then Shawn joined us, then Zeb joined us, and it became ultimately almost like a TV writer’s room in a sense of we would kick around ideas and we would then consolidate all those ideas. Then we would all get on a Zoom and pitch to Kevin Feige. Kevin’s got an encyclopedic mind of the Marvel Universe and the comics and the canon, and he’s very protective of it. So when we would pitch an idea, I think in this case, Kevin goes, “Well, there is the concept of an anchor being, which is established in Marvel canon.” It’s in the comics. We thought, “Oh, that works perfect for the story we’re trying to tell” Right? Am I remembering that correctly, Rhett?
Reese: I have no memory of that, so I can neither confirm nor deny. I have no reason to disbelieve it, but I just don’t remember.
With No Way Home, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield shared their thoughts with the screenwriters. Did any of your returning actors offer thoughts? I’m particularly curious about Channing Tatum, in terms of how faithful to be to the vision for Gambit he had for his solo movie that never happened?
Reese: What he brought to it was the accent. He really wanted to do it in that accent. It’s actually a very well researched dialect he’s doing. He’s not just kind of making it up as he goes. When he decided to do that, that allowed us, the writers, to have some fun and freedom with figuring out how Deadpool would react to that. And of course, Ryan went on this runner of, “I just can’t understand him.” So that came from Channing. I think every actor was consulted with, there were some things that went this way or that way. Largely though, I think the plan for them was executed the way it was in the pages. What they originally saw was just tinkered with a little bit here and there.
Wernick: Channing had wanted to play Gambit for almost as long as we wanted to make Deadpool. He loves gambit, and we know now why he loves Gambit, because Gambit is such a great character. And I think now the audience loves Gambit. So hopefully this becomes a launching point that Gambit does get his own solo movie out of this.
This is a team that has a reputation for being nice guys. So how do you find the balance of writing digs at people — such as the line saying that the MCU is at kind of a low point?
Reese: Those are jokes we don’t have the courage to write. We would not have written that joke. That was a Ryan joke. There are some jokes that you know you’re going to have to answer for them with the person that you’re writing them about. And look, we were not in a position to judge the state of the Marvel Universe or anything they’ve ever done. They’re the best at what they do. They’ve produced a gazillion awesome movies in a row, so it took a bigger gorilla than we to make those jokes. We’re certainly willing to make fun of ourselves. We’ve made fun of the writing in the past. Ryan makes fun of himself. We do pursue largely the “everyone’s fair game” idea. I think Kevin Feige is the greatest for a million reasons, but a million and one is the fact that he would never blanch at making fun of himself or the universe or what’s come before. He didn’t reject a single joke. There was only really one joke that got rejected from the movie, and it was a joke about Disney that was just a little too crass. But that wasn’t by Kevin. It sort of went up even higher than that. And I can’t say what that joke is, so don’t ask me. And that’s happened once on all three movies — we’ve had a joke that was too harsh to make it in, probably for the best. But I guess the long story short is: we make fun of everything and everyone, and then Ryan takes on the bigger battles where it’s someone who we’re too afraid of to make fun of.
Wernick: I sat right behind Kevin at the first screening. We tested it a few times on the Disney lot, and amongst the Disney employees. And I spent my time the entire time watching Kevin react to the movie.
Reese: He’s not going to find the stalkery at all, by the way.
Wernick: He was laughing at jokes that made fun of Marvel just like everybody else in the audience was us. And again, it’s what makes Deadpool so relatable and so fun is that he does make fun of everyone. And if you can’t laugh at yourself, then what are we doing?
Reese: I remember in Zombieland, we did not write the Bill Murray line where Bill Murray makes fun of Garfield, because that was just too terrifying for us to make fun of Garfield. But what we did do was write a line from Little Rock to Bill Murray saying, “Do you have any regrets?” Knowing that he would probably riff a little bit, and he was the one who spat out the Garfield line. So suddenly we get credit for making fun of Bill Murray when we didn’t really do make fun of Bill Murray.
I wanted to run by a few rumors I heard while you were working on this movie, and you can confirm or deny. Robert Downey Jr. back as Tony Stark to reject Wade from the Avengers?
Wernick: Yes.
Reese: That’s true. That’s definitely something we were toying with. The MCU clearly had bigger plans for Downey, which we’ve just learned, which is the Doctor Doom thing. Ultimately, I think that’s why it didn’t happen, though I don’t have the real reason it didn’t happen. There was talk. It was going to be Downey and Jon Favreau in the scene together.
Wernick: There is a script. We have the Downey draft.
Reese: Ryan wrote a Downey scene, and it was the two of them. It was the two of them. And then the feeling was, if Downey either decides not to do it, or if Marvel decides not to have him do it, or for whatever reason it doesn’t work out, [it would then] be tailored for Happy Hogan. Jon was amazing about it. He hung in there while it was still undetermined for a little while, and then ultimately, he was very gracious about having it expand out a little bit. We did love the idea of Tony Stark being in there, but we also perfectly understand why it didn’t happen given that Downey jumped up on stage and became Dr. Doom not 10 seconds after our movie came out. So it was clear that that was the path that we didn’t realize was the path.
What about Daniel Radcliffe as a Wolverine variant?
Reese: No, I don’t think that ever came up. It was a rumor that flew all over, but I don’t think Daniel Radcliffe was ever considered. I think I saw Danny DeVito rumor too. That was never considered, I don’t think.
Wernick: No little Wolvie, we had pitched the idea of Danny DeVito.
Reese: Oh, Danny DeVito, I guess that’s right. It was pitched, yeah. And ultimately it was thought it was just funnier to see Hugh. A short version of Hugh was funnier,
Reese: And that was inspired, obviously, other than by the comics that was inspired by Tim Conway’s Dorf on Golf.
Ryan has said Madonna watched the “Like a Prayer” fight sequence and gave a key note. Do you know what that note was?
Wernick: We were not in on that. That was pretty late in the process, and so we don’t know what that note was. We do know that Ryan wanted that song to be in the movie from the very early stages, long before Hugh was involved, long before there even was a movie to put it in. He was wanting to do a sequence of Deadpool in a oner, a move from left to right across camera, slicing up bad guys to “Like a Prayer.”
Wernick: Before it was Deadpool Corps, it was zombies. When Ryan jumped on the phone with us, I think it was November of 2021, and said, ”Hey, you guys want to come back and do a Deadpool movie? Here are some of my thoughts.” He pitched this idea of Deadpool versus Zombies, and he pitched this final scene, the climax of the movie being Deadpool, going down the line and to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” and wantonly killing zombies. And we were like, “oh, that’s fucking badass. That’s cool.” It ultimately evolved into the Deadpool Corps as we went along.
Reese: Yeah, there was an intermediate version where he was fighting his way out of hell, and those were demons, and he was cutting his way through demons. It was definitely a tentpole that we just kept holding onto.
You’ve now been with Deadpool since 2009, when you guys and Ryan tried to get the first movie off the ground. What’s the image that sticks with you from this movie?
Reese: I love the image of Deadpool wrapped up in the seatbelt or the minivan lying back. That was something somebody came up with on set that was not in the script, that he had actually incapacitated Deadpool with a couple seat belts. That was a great image.
Wernick: Oh, man. The thing that gives me just chills is when Wolverine pulls the mask over. That to me is iconic as it gets in slow-mo, as we hear the opening riff of Madonna.
Reese: And then when they’re kind of “on the cross” too, when they’re quote unquote on the cross holding hands as the electricity pours through them and “Like a Prayer” is playing, and our editors did such a wonderful job getting in each of their heads and remembering sort of what brought them there and what means the most to them and kinds of things. And it’s very goose bumpy for me.
