Ryan Reynolds Gave Up His First ‘Deadpool’ Salary to Fund On-Set Writer’s Room

Deadpool and Wolverine, out later this month, is the third release in Marvel Studios’ Deadpool film series. Like its two predecessors, 2016’s Deadpool and 2018’s Deadpool 2 , the film is led by Ryan Reynolds on screen and, collaboratively, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick in the writer’s room. In a recent interview with the New York Times, the actor explained the origin story of the tight-knit pair of writers who brought the first film in the franchise to life — including why he had to foot the bill in order for them to do so.

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“No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success. I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen,” he shared. “They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.”

With the upcoming release of Deadpool and Wolverine , the franchise’s leading man isn’t having to take many sacrificial pay cuts these days, but he looks back on the creation of that first film as a needed learning opportunity.

“It was a lesson in a couple of senses,” Reynolds said. “I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money. It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie. I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time. I remembered wanting to feel that more — not just on ‘Deadpool,’ but on anything.”

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The script for Deadpool was in the works for around six years, Reese and Wernick said back in 2016. The two writers worked in close collaboration with Reynolds and director Tim Miller, which made the actor’s decision to cover the cost of their presence on set more of an obvious choice. They showed up every day. “Fox, interestingly, wouldn’t pay for us to be on set,” they confirmed on an episode of AMC’s Geeking Out . “Ryan Reynolds paid out of his own money, out of his own pocket.”

Reynolds served as a producer on Deadpool and became a credited writer on Deadpool 2 , as well as Deadpool & Wolverine which adds writers Zeb Wells and Shawn Levy, who also directed the film. The film hits theaters on July 26.

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