Deadpool has been a huge success for 20th Century Fox, smashing the record for the biggest February opening, enjoying the highest-ever debut for an R-rated movie, and pulling in $282 million and counting around the globe. However, if it wasn’t for the leaked test footage back in 2014, the film may never have seen the light of day, having been stuck in development hell for over a decade.
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, director Tim Miller has recalled how Fox were reluctant to give the go ahead to the movie, as they “didn’t get it”.
“Fox told me a number,” states Miller. “They said, ‘Here’s where the budget needs to be if we’re gonna do this as an R-rated film.’ The number had to start with a four. And then it was up to the point where the senior execs at Fox were looking at it. [Fox chairman] Tom Rothman just said, ‘No. We don’t get it.’ Tom told me, ‘Love your passion but I just don’t care for the script. Don’t get it.’ To be fair, some things had changed from between the time when we first started talking and when we proposed the budget. Green Lantern had come out and that hadn’t helped Ryan’s career. Plus, I was a first-time director. It’s a particular confluence of momentum and money and talent that leads to any movie getting made.”
“I wrote an email once a month or so to the Fox executives, saying ‘Please tell me who I have to fuck to get this going?’ And the answer was, ‘It’s not the right time, we appreciate your passion,’” he continues. “I wrote a lot of emails and I’m sure I annoyed the shit out of them. At one point I asked if a PG-13 would move the needle and then they let me do a more sanitized version of the script. We lost a few ‘fucks’ and we lost a few sexual references. But we didn’t have to adjust the violence at all. Wolverine is stabbing people with swords on his hands and that’s happily PG-13.”
SEE ALSO: Read our reviews of Deadpool here and here and follow all of our coverage here
Miller then went on to discuss his reaction when the test footage leaked, adding that: “I had just gotten home from the train station from San Diego and my phone blows up with Google alerts about Deadpool and I see the test had leaked. And I was horrified. I immediately wrote Fox an email and said ‘I swear on my daughter’s life I didn’t leak this test.’ But within two months we were greenlit.”
Deadpool is set for release on February 10th in the UK and February 12th in the States and sees Ryan Reynolds reprising the role of the Merc with a Mouth alongside T.J. Miller (Transformers: Age of Extinction) as Weasel, Morena Baccarin (Gotham) as Copycat, Gina Carano (Fast & Furious 6) as Angel Dust, Ed Skrein (Game of Thrones) as Ajax, Stefan Kapicic (24) as Colossus, Leslie Uggams (Roots) as Blind Al and newcomer Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
Originally published February 16, 2016. Updated November 9, 2022.
