‘Deadpool 3’ Was Almost a Low-Budget Road Trip Comedy

Ryan Reynolds has revealed the third Deadpool movie nearly became a budget road trip comedy.

Several ideas were touted, including a movie of Reynolds’ superhero, the alter ego of Wade Wilson, and his taxi driver Dopinder (Karan Soni), and the antics they get up to, but they ultimately decided to do the Deadpool & Wolverine movie.

The 47-year-old actor told Entertainment Weekly: “Literally, it was a $5 or $6 million budget with no special effects.”

“It was just a talkie-talkie road trip with me and [Karan Soni’s character] Dopinder and some of the things we collected and saw along the way. It wasn’t meant to be an event movie. If we’re on our way to Point C, it was meant to just get us to Point B. That was the weirdest one. I liked it. I thought it was kind of fun.”

When Fox was merging with Disney, The Proposal star doubted he would ever reprise his role and star in another Marvel movie after 2016’s Deadpool and the 2018 follow-up Deadpool 2.

He told the outlet: “I didn’t know if I’d ever be playing Deadpool again.”

“It’s not something I would’ve said necessarily publicly, but I didn’t know how a character like that would fit into that world [of the MCU].”

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Reynolds recently insisted he wouldn’t have made Deadpool & Wolverine without director Shawn Levy.

After he worked with the 55-year-old filmmaker on Free Guy (2021) and The Adam Project (2022), he decided he would only work on the third flick — which also stars 55-year-old Hugh Jackman as the iconic mutant superhero — if Levy was behind the camera.

Speaking to Deadline, Levy said: “Hugh, in like 2011, Hugh said, ‘You know, if you ever meet Ryan Reynolds and work with him, you’re never going to stop.’ He said that over a decade ago. And it took several years before I met Ryan, but the first time we met to talk about Free Guy, it was clear that we’d both had successful careers, but we were meeting in the right moment.

“We’re old enough to know a really good thing when we stumble into it and not let go.”

“And Free Guy led into The Adam Project. It was on the set of Adam Project that Ryan told me he only wanted to do Deadpool 3 if I directed it.”