Deadpool & Wolverine: Kevin Feige refused Ryan Reynolds' Rashōmon pitch

The actor was not discouraged and proposed “25 other ideas” to the Marvel boss.

Ryan Reynolds And Hugh Jackman are currently on the cover of the new Empire. The opportunity to learn more about the manufacturing of Deadpool & Wolverinewhich will finally bring the two superheroes together next July.

If the interpreter of the clawed mutant reveals that Marvel producer Kevin Feige initially told him advised not to sign to restack after the end “perfect” of his superheroic journey in Logan (2017), by James Mangold, Ryan Reynolds tells an equally surprising anecdote: initially, this same Feige was not enthusiastic about his pitch for the reunion of the two mutants.

The duo explains that as the announcement of a third Dead Pool was made just after Disney bought Fox, Kevin was thinking about how to integrate the X-Men into the Avengers. It was in this context that Reynolds made him a proposition: to shoot a third opus of Dead Pool by bringing the two superheroes together in one film “to the Rashōmon“to understand “a story similar to Akira Kurosawa's classic in which Wolverine and Deadpool are involved in the same case together, but it is told through three completely different points of view.”

The 1950 Japanese film relates the death of a samurai, then details via flashbacks what happened to him, via the perspective of several key characters in the story, including that of the dead man. A revolutionary process at the time, which earned Rashōmon the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, then which inspired dozens of films, its American remake The Outrage in 1964 in Last duel (2022) by Ridley Scott by way of The Ultimate Raid (1956) by Stanley Kubrick or Basic (2003) by John McTiernan.

For Reynolds, recounting the reunion between Deadpool and Wolverine in this way would have been a way of “give more breadth to the film”while staging it “in a simple way”. The problem was that at that time, Kevin Feige had not yet found the right way to incorporate the X-Men into Disney.

“The truth is, I didn't yet know how to integrate Deadpool into our franchise. I was thinking a lot about the ideal way to bring the mutants, the X-Men, into the MCU, and I thought it wouldn't be should not just be content to bring back the successes (from Fox, editor’s note). But the thing is, Ryan is an idea machine. So he offered me this one, but also 25 other pitches…”

Rashōmon by Akira Kurosawa, the film that started it all (review)

Ryan Reynolds confirms, explaining that following this initial refusal: “I came back to draw on our idea board, I wrote at least 18 new concepts. Some were thought of as independent films at Sundance, with a budget of less than $10 million. That would have been an opportunity to 'use the license, but in a completely new way. And I also proposed more expensive, bigger films, without forgetting to submit films from the industry.

Kevin Feige and Ryan Reynolds don't specify which concept was kept, but we understand in the latest trailer for Deadpool and Wolverine that it will be a question of multiverses. We also know that Emma Corrin will play Charles Xavier's evil sister, and we assume that she will be the big villain of this sequel. Will the idea be to bring back former X-Men performers alongside Hugh Jackman, like Halle Berry, for example? And/or to offer alternative versions of Logan on screen? On paper, anything is possible…

Directed by Shawn Levy (Free Guy, Reel Steal…) Deadpool & Wolverine is expected in theaters on July 24.