The plan would have been for an intentionally terrible movie to drop in theaters, then reveal the surprise.
Deadpool & Wolverine is in theaters today, and from what we’ve heard, there are plenty of surprises for fans that have not yet been blown by reviews and previews. That’s pretty impressive, but if Ryan Reynolds had his way, the surprise would have been significantly bigger. In a guest appearance on Hot Ones, Reynolds revealed that they briefly considered marketing Deadpool & Wolverine as a totally different movie, with the idea being that audiences would turn out for a Reynolds/Jackman team-up…and get the ultimate team-up as a surprise. Per Reynolds, the ideal situation would have been for the movie to look terrible…right until the Marvel logo appeared and the crowd went wild.
It’s a great idea, and would have been an impressive piece of performance art, but you can see a few flaws in the idea: first off, as soon as the movie premiered, somebody on social media would have blown the secret, so you basically would have spent all that extra money for a one-night gag. There’s also the fact that Hollywood is struggling, and Disney likely wouldn’t have wanted to sacrifice a lucrative opening night for the joke.
“I’m shocked that we managed to get through this without some of our biggest surprises, even hypothesized online,” Reynolds said. “The original idea with this movie was to shoot a fake movie called Alpha Cop, that was intentionally bad….It was about 2 guys that were sharing one brain, and together they make the perfect cop. The poster says Alpha Cop: two cops, one brain, all balls. And it was meant to be horrible. Like ten people in America would go to see this movie on opening weekend, and five minutes into the movie the Marvel logo would flip up and it would actually be Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Honestly, part of us wishes we lived in that timeline, Maybe Deadpool and Wolverine can figure out a way to take us there.
In Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) will change the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). The film also stars Matthew Macfadyen as Paradox, and Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, with the return of Deadpool alums Morena Baccarin as Vanessa Carlysle, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Karan Soni as Dopinder, Stefan Kapičić as Piotr Rasputin/Colossus, Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Rob Delaney as Peter, and Lewis Tan as Shatterstar. Aaron Stanford is returning as Pyro from the X-Men film series, with Jennifer Garner rumored to return as Elektra Natchios.
Kevin Feige, Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy and Lauren Shuler Donner produce with Louis D’Esposito, Wendy Jacobson, Mary McLaglen, Josh McLaglen, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, George Dewey and Simon Kinberg serving as executive producers. Deadpool & Wolverine is written by Ryan Reynolds & Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick & Zeb Wells & Shawn Levy. Deadpool & Wolverine will be released exclusively in theaters on July 26th.
