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Just like multiple Deadpools caused mayhem in this summer’s blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds reveals in a new Deadline Hollywood interview that there have been many Deadpool pitches over the years. “I pitched one where Deadpool is going after the hunter who killed Bambi’s mom,” he said. Deadpool “ends up loving the guy and they go on another adventure.”
Unsurprisingly, Disney didn’t bite. “I was told we don’t touch Bambi,” Reynolds said. “Okay, good to know. Sacred cow.”
But there were plenty more ideas where that came from. After Disney acquired Fox, meaning it now had the rights to both Deadpool and the X-Men’s Wolverine, Reynolds brought other pitches to Marvel chief Kevin Feige’s table. The first was “a Deadpool/Wolverine movie in the style of Rashomon where the first act is entirely Wolverine’s perspective, the second act is entirely Deadpool’s perspective and, of course, the third is objective. The whole thing would be meant to create pure joy and elation and I have a game plan…”
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Feige stopped Reynolds cold. “No,” he said. “Logan’s dead.” (Not for long, as it turns out.)
Next up: “I pitched a Sundance movie. Like a little, tiny, three or four million dollar indie movie with Deadpool. “All I need is the suit. I don’t need scale and scope and spectacle. We’re just going character.” One appealing thing to Reynolds? A low budget would mean “the threshold for a return on your investment will be very low.” Profits would be virtually guaranteed, plus who would expect an indie version of Deadpool?
Eventually, Reynolds and Disney came to a crossroads. None of Reynolds’ ideas were panning out, and he and Shawn Levy had other projects they could work on. Another Deadpool movie looked dead in the water until Reynolds got a call from Hugh Jackman in August 2022.
Reynolds’ first thought was that someone died. But Jackman had another agenda. “He just said that he asked himself, ‘What I would do if I could do anything I want?’ And it was to play in the sandbox with Deadpool.”
It’s an example, Reynolds explained, of how ‘fake it until you make it’ can be a sound strategy. “You don’t have to have all the answers. You can really go in and just rely on conviction and hard work.”
In other words, he pitched Feige once again on a Deadpool and Wolverine movie. “I was nervous because I thought he’d shut me down half the way through, and we were kind of making it up as we were saying it. I didn’t have a plan — I just had Hugh. But the story that you see in the film is that pitch where Sean and I are just bullshitting. We had a loose framework — it had to be one sort of thing — but the details were coming in the moment and they were good.”
Next thing you know, Reynolds was hard at work on a screenplay. And since he just proved that a no from Kevin Feige is never a final no, maybe the hunter from Bambi can return in Deadpool 4.