Kevin Feige Shot Down Ryan Reynolds’ Kurosawa-Inspired ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Pitch

After that, Reynolds pitched eighteen different treatments

Among the films that rile up fans’ imaginations is Deadpool and Wolverine; ever since Disney acquired Fox and the mutants came home to Marvel Studios, fans have been worried about the R-rated nature of the Merc with a Mouth, will Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine be a part of it, and what the third iteration of the franchise could look like has been a point of contention. Though all those feelings came to a rest when it was announced that the feature under the new banner would maintain its rating. But the road to finding the right story to tell wasn’t easy for Ryan Reynolds and the team.

Initially, Reynolds envisioned a Rashomon-esque story about “Wolverine and Deadpool and something that they got into together, but told from three completely different perspectives,” the actor told Empire Magazine in a new interview. “It was a way to make a large-scale movie in a very small way.” However, Marvel head Kevin Feige turned down the idea

“The truth is, I wasn’t even sure how to incorporate Deadpool yet,” Feige admits. Surely, it wouldn’t have been an easy decision for the studio which at the time had finished the Infinity Saga on a high note with Avengers: Endgame. Furthermore, fans’ love for Deadpool and mutants and the anticipation to see them in the MCU needs to be served right, Feige explained

After the initial rejection, Reynolds went back to the drawing board, and “I wrote up about 18 different treatments,” he recalls. Further revealing “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.” And probably one of those ideas stuck with the studio. Fans had been long waiting for Deadpool and Wolverine to team up so once “Hugh raised his hand, two months later we were prepping. It was honestly one of the fastest turnarounds I’ve ever seen,” tells executive producer Wendy Jacobson