Feige described the pitch as a “Rashomon story about Wolverine and Deadpool and something that they got into together, but told from three completely different perspectives. It was a way to make a large-scale movie in a very small way.”
Explaining why he rejected the pitch, Feige said, “The truth is, I wasn’t even sure how to incorporate Deadpool yet. I was very much thinking about how to bring mutants and the X-Men into , and I thought it needed to be more than just playing the hits. But the truth is, Ryan is an idea machine. So he may have pitched that to me, but he also pitched 25 other thoughts and ideas.”
Reynolds said that he “wrote up about 18 different treatments” for Deadpool & Wolverine after Feige turned the first idea down. “Some of them almost like a Sundance film, a budget of under $10 million, sort of using the IP in a way that they previously hadn’t used, and I pitched bigger movies, and I pitched things in-between,” Reynolds recalled.
The film is directed by Shawn Levy, who co-wrote the screenplay with Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells.Brandon Schreur has been writing about comics, movies, television shows, and all things pop culture for roughly five years. He's a lifelong cinephile who spends way, way too much money buying Blu-rays and trade paperbacks. You can find him on twitter at @brandonschreur.