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Ryan Reynolds and his Free Guy director, Shawn Levy, have been formulating their plan for a third Deadpool feature since their time filming 2022's The Adam Project. But their ideation took an abrupt left turn when Reynolds got a phone call from an old friend.
"Everything changed radically on the day that Hugh called Ryan," Levy tells Entertainment Weekly, referring to Hugh Jackman. "We had been workshopping a number of concepts about potential plots for a third Deadpool feature. Those were narrative concepts that were more sequelly to the first two Deadpools, but None of them envisaged such a profound shift. I can fairly state that the story entirely altered and, in fact, came to us very, very rapidly commencing that day."
It also didn't harm that Levy is also friends with Jackman. The two worked together on 2011's Real Steel, 2014's Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, and 2021's Free Guy.
Now, for the first time since 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Reynolds and Jackman are sharing the screen as their characters from Marvel comics, Deadpool and Wolverine — hence the straightforward title of the film (in theaters July 26). This is also the first time both figures are bringing their R-rated hijinks to Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe of the Avengers. After hanging up his katanas and red-leather attire, Wade Wilson (Reynolds) is prepared to live the uncomplicated life. But when the Time Variance Authority, the multiverse organization dedicated to preserving the sacrosanct timeline, plucks him out of his reality, Wade realizes he still has a greater purpose.
Appearing in nine X-Men films already as the adamantium-clawed berserker, Jackman seemed content to retire the character after 2017's Logan, which offered a finite resolution to his narrative. Though, fans — including Reynolds — always held out hope of seeing Wade and Logan together for a legitimate film after Origins, which even the actors made light of on occasion. "Everyone assumed that Hugh's return was the result of me or Ryan pestering or pitching him relentlessly," Levy says. "But even more remarkably, this was the consequence of a Hugh Jackman epiphany. He wanted to do this team-up of Logan and Deadpool, and so it really was a sky-opening gift from the heavens sort of phone call that altered everything."
Deadpool and Wolverine discovers a version of Logan who "let down his entire world," as Mr. Paradox (Succession's Matthew Macfadyen) intones in the film's trailers. "This is still Wade dealing with certain issues, but it's very much two characters, two heroes, and two haunted men hoisted together in a shared journey," Levy adds.
There are a number of other characters who encircle both Wade and Logan on their odyssey — some we know, some we don't (at least, not officially). Emmy nominee Emma Corrin (The Crown, Murder at the End of the World) arrives on the scene as Cassandra Nova, an immensely powerful psychic who's also sort of but not quite the twin sister of Professor Charles Xavier, the leader of the X-Men as portrayed in past films by both Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy. A bunch of familiar faces from the past two Deadpool movies also make comebacks: Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna), Colossus (Stefan Kapičić), Peter/Sugar Bear (Rob Delaney), Dopinder (Karan Soni), and Shatterstar (Lewis Tan).
Then there are those roles that have been revealed, either in the press or by paparazzi, which Levy declines to comment on. One name he does acknowledge is Aaron Stanford, who's returned as the fire-wielding mutant Pyro after portraying the character in 2003's X2 and 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand. Fans first received a glimpse in the Deadpool and Wolverine trailer that debuted at the Super Bowl.
"I'll say we didn't start off with a wishlist," Levy says of all these special appearances. "From the day we started devising this Deadpool and Wolverine narrative, we let the story dictate the characters, not the other way around. Aaron and his return as Pyro was an outgrowth of that, and that pertains to pretty much all the characters you'll see in the movie."
Despite the enormous ensemble jammed into this multiverse-hopping, F-bomb-dropping, fourth wall-shattering extravaganza, the filmmaker emphasizes this is a true two-hander between Reynolds and Jackman. "As a two-hander, oil-and-water story, this movie draws inspiration from the great films in that genre," he says. "That means everything from Midnight Run [1988] and 48 Hours [1982] to Rain Man [1988] and Planes, Trains and Automobiles [1987], these missions that couple a duo of incongruous characters. The pleasure we get as an audience witnessing that relationship evolve."
