Deadpool may be a household name, but believe it or not there was a time when he wasn’t associated with box office gold, so much so that Tim Miller, who directed the first film in the Deadpool trilogy, was paid a shockingly small amount. In an interview with Collider‘s Steve Weintraub at CCXP in São Paulo, Brazil, the director revealed that he made a six-figure salary for the project. The 2016 film would go on to make more than $780 million worldwide, which makes Miller’s salary look like a drop in the bucket.
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“I got $225,000 to direct Deadpool,” Miller said. “I know it sounds like a lot of money, but for two years of work, that’s not a ton of money. Not that I’m not grateful, I’m f—ing grateful, that’s the way it is because you’re supposed to when you’re a first-time director.”
Still, Miller remains fairly humble about it all, knowing that he helped transform the Merc With The Mouth from a cult favorite comic book character into a global pop culture icon. However, he did admit that, because of all the merchandising that’s since come out of the franchise, he could’ve negotiated for a bit of those sales. But really, who can blame him?
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“You know what I feel? Nothing but pride,” he said. “I mean, I feel like every time I walk down the aisles out there on the floor of CCXP and I see all these Deadpool figurines, I think they wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t made that film. And I feel uniquely fortunate that I could be part of it.”
Unfortunately, while Miller still has a very active career (he created the Amazon Prime series Secret Level, which was just renewed for a second season), creative differences between him and Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds prevented him from returning to helm any of the sequels.
“It became clear that Ryan wanted to be in control of the franchise,” Miller said in a previous interview. “You can work that way as a director, quite successfully, but I can’t…And I don’t think you can negotiate every creative decision, there’s too many to make. So Ryan’s the face of the franchise, and he was the most important component of that, by far. So if he decides he wants to control it, then he’s going to control it.”
Of course, one wonders how Deadpool 2 would’ve turned out if Miller had stuck around. In fact, the Terminator: Dark Fate director has given fans a taste of what could’ve been by revealing that he wanted to give Morena Baccarin’s character Vanessa more screentime by delving deeper into her romance with Wade Wilson / Deadpool, and to have her finally become her alter ego, Copycat. Miller also wanted Ben Grimm – known to comic book fans as the Fantastic Four’s the Thing – to appear in a fight scene between Deadpool and the Juggernaut. While that obviously never happened, audiences were treated to a little crossover action with the Fantastic Four when Chris Evans returned to his role as the Human Torch in Deadpool and Wolverine.
