Ryan Reynolds Wasn't Sure He'd Ever Play Deadpool Again After Disney-Fox Deal

Deadpool franchise star Ryan Reynolds explains why he was ready to exit the franchise after the Disney-Fox deal happened.

By Kofi Outlaw - July 2, 2024 03:36 pm EDT

Deadpool & Wolverine is poised to be one of the biggest movies of Summer 2024, but if you can belive it, there was recently a time when franchise star Ryan Reynolds was ever sure that he'd play the character again.

For context: After Deadpool 2 was released in 2018, the Disney-Fox acquisition deal was finally completed in 2019. The deal put an end to all future plans for 20th Century Fox's X-Men Movie Universe – including the popular Deadpool film franchise. Reynolds had gambled on Deadpool films being R-rated romps through foul language, juvenile vulgarity, sexual depravity and ultra-violence – none of which seemed in line with Disney and Marvel's branding for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To Reynolds, it seemed as though the opportunity to play Deadpool had passed him by:

"I didn't know if I'd ever be playing Deadpool again," Reynolds admitted to EW in a new interview. "It's not something I would've said necessarily publicly, but I didn't know how a character like that would fit into that world [of the MCU]."

(Photo:
Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool in Marvel's "Deadpool & Wolverine"
- Marvel Studios)

Luckily Reynolds hung in there because eventually Disney and Marvel Studios decided to go with a third Deadpool movie that will be part of the MCU, but also retain the franchise's hard-R edge.

Indeed, it seems like a fever dream, now, but for the first decade of the MCU's run, Marvel Studios couldn't play with Fox's X-Men and Fantastic Four characters, or Sony's Spider-Man characters and mythos. It was in the latter half of the 2010s that the partnership deal between Sony and Disney for sharing Spider-Man was established, as well as the Disney-Fox Deal that brought the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises under Marvel Studio's control.

Nobody knows what a crazy journey that's been better than Marvel Studios head, Kevin Feige. Feige had a major career start as an assistant to X-Men movies producer Lauren Schuler Donner, so he's been dreaming of seeing all the characters of Marvel come together onscreen for longer than most:

"The notion that, all these years later, we're in a world where [Jackman] is Wolverine, and Deadpool and all of those X-Men characters are together under the same roof, is a pretty amazing quarter-of-a-century experience," Feige said.

Deadpool & Wolverine has a theatrical release date of July 26th.

Here's a preview of what Marvel Studios will bring to SDCC 2024

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