Deadpool Taught Ryan Reynolds Too Much Time & Money Can Ruin Any Movie

Ryan Reynolds says Deadpool taught him to value storytelling over money and time. Reynolds began his film career in the 1990s, but he gained widespread fame acting in comedies like National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.  While the actor and producer expanded his interests beyond Hollywood to include marketing, gin production, and a Welsh soccer team (among others), Reynolds is best known for his role as Wade Wilson in Deadpool.

As early as 2004, Reynolds was helping develop a Deadpool movie at New Line Cinema, but the film settled into development hell for several years due to rights issues. Then, after Reynolds appeared as Wade Wilson in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and fans pushed back against the film retconning Wilson’s origin, Fox greenlit a more comic-accurate Deadpool in 2014, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (the team who wrote Zombieland). Directed by Tim Miller (Love, Death, and Robots), Deadpool starred Reynolds as the Merc with a Mouth alongside Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, and T.J. Miller. The film was a box office smash despite a low budget and unorthodox marketing and earned two sequels, Deadpool 2 and as-yet-untitled third film.

This week in an interview about his marketing company’s approach, Reynolds pointed to Deadpool as an important influence. Reynolds told Forbes that Deadpool gave him “a crash course in the value of marketing and storytelling.” Making the film with a limited budget and a tight deadline showed Reynolds that too much money and time can stifle the creativity necessary in making a great movie. Read Reynolds’ full explanation of the idea below:

“I really had a crash course in the value of marketing and storytelling in this context through Deadpool. Deadpool taught me that necessity is the mother of invention. Deadpool, the franchise, never had the kind of budgets and finances to work with that some of the larger comic book properties did. Two of the greatest adversaries to creativity is too much time and too much money. I learned the value of character over spectacle through Deadpool.”

Because Deadpool‘s R-rating made Fox uncertain of its reception, the film received a much lower budget than other superhero movies at the time. Deadpool had a $58 million dollar budget compared to the $250 million dollar budget for Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War that was released the same year. The low budget forced Deadpool‘s marketing team to get creative, and Reynolds himself suggested a cheaper but very successful campaign on social media that showcased Deadpool’s trademark character traits. This experience clearly stuck with Reynolds as he went on to lead the marketing division of his production company Maximum Effort.

Reynold’s next film projects with Maximum Effort include the upcoming A Christmas Carol retelling Spirited for Apple TV+ and the untitled Deadpool 3. Now that Deadpool is joining the MCU it seems unlikely that Deadpool‘s second sequel will need to worry about working around a small budget, but that does not mean the film won’t keep its focus on its characters. Based on Reynold’s words, both future projects should utilize the creative storytelling that made Deadpool a hit.

Source: Forbes

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