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Ryan Reynolds reveals financial sacrifice he made for ‘Deadpool’

Wed 17 July 2024 9:51, UK

Ryan Reynolds has revealed the sacrifices he made to ensure his first Deadpool film was made after a decade of trying to get the project off the ground. To make sure his passion project made it across the finish line, he was prepared to give up his own pay.

The 2016 superhero movie was a long road for Reynolds. He’d been working on an adaptation of Deadpool since 2004 when he began working with David S. Goyer to develop the project. Later, in 2010, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were hired to create the script, ensuring that the character remained true to not only Reynold’s vision but also to his earlier depiction of the figure in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the original comic.

Over a decade from when Reynolds first began developing the idea of a full-length Deadpool film, the movie became an international phenomenon. It grossed $783.1 million in box offices worldwide, against a budget of $58 million, making it a spectacular success.

Due to the box office triumph, Reynolds was rightly paid handsomely for his performance, but he was prepared to go without nevertheless. In an interview with The New York Times ahead of the release of Deadpool and Wolverine, he found himself reminiscing on those early days and his enduring passion for the character.

“No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success,” Reynolds said. “I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen,” he added, sharing the incredible sacrifice he made.

It’s a decision he made to ensure vital members of the team could be there to get the film over the line and make it the best possible product. He explained, “They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.”

“It was a lesson in a couple of senses,” Reynolds said, “I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money.” With a limited budget, Deadpool was filmed in only seven days, between March 23rd and May 29th, 2015. “It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie,” Reynolds said, finding a silver lining in the tough task.

Through sacrifice and determination, Reynolds’ passion and excitement towards Deadpool can never be questioned. It was such a reinvigorating project for the Canadian that he admitted, “I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time. I remembered wanting to feel that more — not just on ‘Deadpool,’ but on anything.”

In a stark contrast to the usually incredibly lofty budget given to superhero flicks, Reynolds believes that the tight constraints placed on the film, and his risk taken to forgo his own salary, made the movie great. “Necessity is the mother of invention. The more constraints you place on a creative process, the more you think outside of the box,” he told the publication, “So, personally, I didn’t want more money than we needed. We wanted just enough money to make what we set out to make, but also find ways to creatively pivot.” 

Deadpool and Wolverine is expected to be one of the biggest releases of this coming summer, the movie is set to arrive in cinemas on July 26th.