Ryan Reynolds was apparently blackmailed into playing Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Do you remember X-Men Origins: Wolverine?
You may have forgotten about the movie. But, the 2009 X-Men release did pretty well in the box office despite 38 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
Well, if you think you hard enough you may recall Ryan Reynolds’ cameo in the movie. In fact, that movie provided an on-screen introduction of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. Fast forward seven years later Deadpool is now setting box office records.And to hear Reynolds tell it, the studio may or may not have given him an ultimatum which felt pretty strange at the time but wound up paying off handsomely for all involved down the road.
He discussed what happened during a Talks at Google presentation last week:
“They sew his mouth shut, let lasers come out of his eyes. He has weird knives that fly out of his hands. I remember saying, ‘That’s really going to anger some people. That’s not Deadpool.’ And they basically said, ‘Well, you can play him or we can hire someone else to play him.’ So for me it was…I was a little bit blackmailed.”
It wasn’t a good idea back then, but it ended up being a brilliant idea later. Reynolds went from being not much more than a romantic comedy actor to a major movie star now. What probably felt like a bad idea back then wound up setting the stage for the rest of his acting career.
