Ryan Reynolds Initially Thought Deadpool Wouldn’t Fit Into the MCU

Ryan Reynolds initially wasn’t sure if Deadpool would have a place in the MCU when The Walt Disney Company acquired 21st Century Fox.

Reynolds’ Wade Wilson is set to make his official MCU debut in Deadpool & Wolverine. Reynolds previously played the character in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, 2016’s Deadpool, and 2018’s Deadpool 2; however, he wasn’t convinced there would be another adventure for the Merc With a Mouth when Disney purchased 21st Century Fox in 2019.

“I didn’t know if I’d ever be playing Deadpool again,” Reynolds told Entertainment Weekly . “It’s not something I would’ve said necessarily publicly, but I didn’t know how a character like that would fit into that world [of the MCU].”

Reynolds still privately pitched an idea to Marvel ‘s Kevin Feige to make a Deadpool movie with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine shortly after the acquisition, though Reynolds said that “it was just not even possible” at the time.

“I don’t want to get into corporate acquisition legal laws or whatever. I don’t understand them, but there’s a lot of ’em,” Feige said. “It took a long time between whenever [the acquisition] was announced to it all getting done, so [the characters] weren’t really in our sandbox for a very long time after that first announcement happened.”

When is Marvel and Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool & Wolverine releasing?

The project eventually did come to fruition, as Marvel Studios ‘ Deadpool & Wolverine releases in United States theaters on July 26, 2024.

“The notion that, all these years later, we’re in a world where [Jackman] is Wolverine, and Deadpool and all of those X-Men characters are together under the same roof, is a pretty amazing quarter-of-a-century experience,” Feige said.

Directed by Shawn Levy, Deadpool & Wolverine also stars Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, Matthew Macfadyen as Paradox, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, Rob Delaney as Peter, Karan Soni as Dopinder, Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Stefan Kapičić as Colossus, and Shioli Kutsuna as Yukio.

Source: Entertainment Weekly