Fans of Deadpool had cause for concern when creative difference led to director Tim Miller leaving the sequel. It was the reason why he left that was troubling, though, and it was a claim that he wanted to make the next movie bigger and more expensive, which nobody else including star Ryan Reynolds wanted. Any fears were likely assuaged when Miller was replaced by John Wick co-director David Leitch, who has experience making slick action movies on budgets that don't break the bank.
The mandate for Deadpool 2 does seem to be to keep things as they were in terms of size, which makes sense. The R-rated superhero flick made nearly $800M at a fraction of the cost of your average Marvel movie, so why go the typical studio route and spend more if it isn't necessary? Producer Simon Kinberg agrees, according to his recent comments to EW...
“The goal for us when we sat down and started talking about it was it needs to be as provocative and startling as the first film which means it can’t just be a continuation of the first film. It has tonally and stylistically be as fresh and original. That’s a big challenge especially because they had 10 years to gestate on the first movie and we don’t have that kind of time on the second movie. That’s the biggest mandate going into on the second film: to not make it bigger. We have to resist the temptation to make it bigger in scale and scope, which is normally what you do when you have a surprise hit movie. But actually stay true to the tenets of it’s the tone and the style and the humor that make it so special — it’s not the explosions and the special effects.”
Reynolds, who was just named EW's Entertainer of the Year, says the hunt is still on for stars to play Cable and Domino, two members of X-Force who share complicated connections to Deadpool. He says the reason they chose Leitch as director is that his skills match the sequel's mission statement, and they just really loved John Wick...
“Everbody was just a fan of his work,” says Reynolds. “He’s just a guy who’s so muscular with his action. He also really understands those Deadpool sensibilities and where we need to take the franchise from here. And I love John Wick. One of the things that David Leitch does that very few filmmakers can do these days is they can make a movie on an ultra tight minimal budget look like it was shot for 10-15 times what it cost.”
20th Century Fox are playing this one smart, and hopefully other studios will follow suit. Deadpool 2 begins filming next year and should hit theaters in 2018.
