With all the projects Ryan Reynolds has been attaching his name to, it’s been questionable whether or not the actor would eventually return to the role of Deadpool, the comic book antihero with a mouth as fast as his swords are sharp.
Now, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Ryan Reynolds has opened up a little about the tone and direction of Deadpool, the semi-spin-off of X-Men: Origins — Wolverine, giving fans of the character hope that the movie is still alive — if a ways away from being made.
“It’s a nasty piece of work,” he said. “It’s just based in so much emotional filth, completely. It’s like Barfly if it were a superhero movie. It sort of treads into the world of an emotionally damaged person. I always say that Deadpool is a guy in a highly militarized shame spiral…. It’s so different than the superhero movies to date, it departs so far from that.
“…it’s a lot like going to prison for the first day…You got to walk up and hit the biggest guy you see to establish a bit of cred. With Deadpool, early on you have to establish that moral flexibility. There’s a gamble to it — you’re going to lose a few people right at the beginning but you take the gamble and know that eventually you’re going to win them back.”
The Deadpool movie is currently in development at Fox. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the writers of last year’s hit film Zombieland, have submitted a screenplay and word on the street is that Robert Rodriguez, the co-director of Machete, has taken meetings with Fox to discuss directing the film.
Fresh from filming Green Lantern, Reynolds says it’s Deadpool’s moral flexibility that drew him to the character. While rumor has it that Warner Brothers is looking to quickly greenlight two sequels to Green Lantern in an effort to push Reynolds away from a solo film featuring masked mercenary Deadpool, Reynolds has some clear ideas on where he’d like to see the film go.
As the LA Times writes, “The new film won’t be beholden to the events depicted in Wolverine in any way, Reynolds said, and, yes, fans can expect the character to break the fourth wall and address the audience at times like some sort of deranged Ferris Bueller armed with katana swords.”
While I have my doubts that this film may ever get made (Reynolds seems to becoming increasingly more and more booked with other projects), I’d love to see a Deadpool movie — with or without Ryan Reynolds. It seems the obvious choice here would be to hire somebody like Scott Adkins to play the fully costumed hero and then have Reynolds provide his voice in post-production. Maybe he could also film a few short flashback scenes.
More so, after watching Machete I’m itching to see a new Robert Rodriguez film where he directs from somebody else’s script. Machete‘s script was the weakest part of that film and I’d love to see Rodriguez work some of his visual magic while resting on the back of a solid story with funny dialogue.
A Rodriguez-directed, Scott Adkins-starring, Zombieland writers-written Deadpool movie? Sounds like a winner to me. What do you think?
