In anticipation of their new sci-fi thriller Life, we got to have an exclusive chat with Deadpool 2 writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who gave us a hint about how Cable will be depicted in the sequel. They also discuss the short attached to Logan, new director David Leitch, and how emotion will still play a big part in the new film! Look for the full Life interview next week.
RELATED: Watch the Logan Deadpool 2 Teaser!
ComingSoon.net: When Cable and Liefeld’s other New Mutants and X-Force were debuting in the ’90s, there was this instant popularity, as well as an instant backlash to the way those characters were depicted with these huge guns, huge thighs, a million pouches, all the women looked like porn stars, etc. Are you going to have fun with the absurdity of that at all?
Paul Wernick: Well you’ll have to see! (laughs) I don’t wanna jinx stuff, but yeah, probably. We’ll have to talk about that.
CS: Liefeld very much set the tone for those characters for the rest of their run, the way they’re depicted. The ultra-masculinity of it all. That feels like perfect ground for Deadpool to walk all over.
Rhett Reese: Yeah! Ryan plays Deadpool with a hint of femininity, and I think that can be funny opposite a Cable who’s über-masculine. That’ll come into casting and performance and the character design and his wardrobe and things like that too. I think we’ll definitely play into that.
CS: That special teaser for Deadpool just came out. Is that a good indicator of what we’re in for in the sequel or was it meant as sort of an absurd one-off?
Reese: It was a little more absurd, to be honest. If you look at the plot, abandoning an innocent man as he tries to get dressed, that’s probably something that doesn’t fit into a movie. It wouldn’t work in the logic of a movie, but Deadpool affords us the opportunity to break rules, always. We just thought, “Let’s make a silly short that doesn’t really happen to Deadpool.” We don’t really like to adhere to any rules in Deadpool. Even the tone can be more absurd if we feel like it’s funny. That was our goal there.
CS: You see a little more of David Leitch’s signature with the icy blue light and the bleak surroundings. How is his vision a little different than Tim Miller’s?
Wernick: Every director brings their take to the material. Dave is a wonderful director with great ideas. He’s really an action savant. He really makes every other action director look like they’re from another era, from an era long ago. We’re really embracing that and writing to it.
Reese: We also wanted that open to feel like the start of “Logan,” so if you were going to see “Logan” and the first shot came up, you would think it’s gonna be Hugh in the hoodie, and then when it turns out to be Deadpool you realize what’s going on. That was the goal and I think he pulled it off wonderfully.
CS: At the core of the first “Deadpool” there was a very emotional, classical “Phantom of the Opera”-esque love story with tragedy and pathos and all that good stuff. How important was it to keep the emotional grounding for the sequel?
Wernick: VERY. Very. It’s what we spent much of our last several years doing is teasing out the emotion of the story. The humor and all that is obviously going to be there, so now we’re focusing on the emotion and such. Again, as you mentioned, Deadpool at the core was a love story and an emotional story, and we wanted to bring the audience to that same place in a different way on the sequel.
CS: What would you say was the biggest misconception, either from studios or critics or execs, about why “Deadpool” was successful?
Reese: Well I think a lot of people just felt like the R rating had everything to do with it. While I agree to a certain extent, I personally feel like a PG-13 “Deadpool” still would have succeeded, because I think it’s more about the character. You can’t just slap an R rating on something and have it be good. That’s definitely one element of a lot of other elements. I think people are attributing a little too much to that. That said, having the ability to break those rules with an R rating did help us.
RELATED: Fox Already Planning Deadpool 3 Featuring X-Force
Deadpool 2 will introduce Cable, the time-traveling son of the X-Men’s Cyclops. The character has one of the comic book medium’s more complicated origin stories, so it remains to be seen what will go into the backstory of the big screen Cable. The role is currently being cast and, while rumors have been quite prevalent, an actor has not yet been selected for the role. Zazie Beetz (Atlanta) has joined the cast of as Domino.
Even as Deadpool 2 heads towards production, plans are said to already be underway on a third Deadpool film that will flesh out a full X-Force team.
John Wick‘s David Leitch is directing Deadpool 2 from a screenplay by the returning “real heroes here,” screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Reynolds is again serving as a producer on Deadpool 2 alongside X-Men franchise caretakers Simon Kinberg and Lauren Shuler Donner.
What do you think of the direction Deadpool 2 is going in? Sound off in the comments below!
