Deadpool/X-Men Producer: ‘I Would Love to See Them Together’
Producer Simon Kinberg and director Tim Miller talk bringing Deadpool to life and whether he’ll ever hang with more mutants.
They did it. Against all odds, the creative team behind Deadpool — actor Ryan Reynolds, director Tim Miller, screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and later 20th Century Fox in-house Marvel producer Simon Kinberg — got the little movie made that no one thought could ever happen: Deadpool, a hard-R, raunchy and rude superhero film based on a cult(ish) character that not only succeeded but told all the other movies (to use an expression Deadpool himself might employ) to go suck it. $762 million at the worldwide box office later, the Merc with a Mouth proved that if you stuck to the spirit of the comic and made something different and unique, people would come.
Now just a mere three months after its theatrical arrival, Deadpool lands on Blu-ray and DVD this week with a whole bunch of extra features, making-of content, deleted scenes and the usual bells and whistles. We got a chance to speak briefly (and I mean briefly) with Miller and Kinberg at the home video press day, where they spoke about realizing their vision for the movie, what if anything got left out and if Wade Wilson and the X-Men will ever bump their gnarly heads one day.
Den of Geek: Are you guys walking into meetings at the studio now going “Uh-huh, toldja”?
Tim Miller: No, no, no…
Simon Kinberg: No, because ultimately they supported making the movie. The “toldja” would have been if they put it into turnaround and we went and made it at Paramount — then we’d walk into Fox and say, “Toldja, we made a hit movie for another studio.” Ultimately they did support the movie and once we started making it, they fully supported it in the sense that they didn’t censor us. They let us make the movie we wanted to make — trusted Tim, trusted Ryan and let them go.
Tim Miller: I also feel that — being 51, I’ve had a little life experience and being an arrogant dick usually doesn’t get you what you hope for. So my attitude is “Thank you sir, can I have another?”
Did it help that you had that core group together — you (Tim), Ryan, Rhett and Paul — throughout the whole development process? It’s so rare when happens, but this group stuck together the whole time.
Miller: There has not been a movie — ‘cause I’ve had a few films in development where the first question is, “So the writers, would you like to replace them?” Because it happens all the time. I haven’t done it on other movies, generally speaking, but it never even occurred to me to do it on this, because those guys really just had the voice from the beginning. And Ryan is — Simon and I talk about this all the time — where are you going to find a guy who’s got movie star good looks, is just a comedic fuckin’ genius, is great with action, I mean even with the stunt guys, the way he poses, the way he moves, is just so great. And he’s a brilliant dramatic actor. That’s what Deadpool needed, and where are you gonna find that?
So all of that, plus Ryan being such an experienced guy in the business, made it the perfect little team that we needed to move it through. But we also needed Simon to move it that last little bit, because the four of us had been working on it for quite a while and hadn’t gotten it there yet.
Is there anything that the studio said, “No way, you can’t do this”?
Kinberg: There were moments where we talked about how much we could reference the X-Men actually, and the studio was a little uncomfortable with mixing. And then I would say everything we wanted ended up in the movie anyway, because we just did it and they saw that audiences laughed and they were like, “Okay, keep it in the movie.”
Miller: There was a little discussion about the make-up early on, which I think everybody expected. We had it even within our core group about how hideous we could make him and still have the audience root for him and have him be relatable. I was on the “very hideous” end of that argument. I mean, that’s kind of what drives his whole personality and the way he relates to the world, so it was pretty important to me. But any time you hire a guy like Ryan Reynolds, because he is so good-looking, you don’t want to ruin that for your movie.
Simon, do you envision a point when all these movies and characters, Deadpool and X-Men, are on the same timeline? Do you foresee a time when they can line up and there can be some more crossover happening?
Kinberg: I’m pretty focused on trying to figure out what the next Deadpool would be, if we’re lucky enough to make it, and to figure out the future of the X-Men movies. But I would love to see them together. I grew up on comics that were always cross-pollinating, and I think there’s a lot of excitement and fun when you do that. And the tones are so different that on the one hand, it could create a cacophony, but on the other hand it could create this incredible collision…
Miller: (whispering jokingly) He’s chickenshit…
Kinberg: I’m giving you the vague answer, but I’d love to see it and it would take a lot of careful architecturing because of the timelines and everything else.
Deadpool is out on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday (May 10).
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Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…