**Shawn Levy Reveals ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Collaboration Almost Didn’t Occur**
Shawn Levy, the director of the highly anticipated “Deadpool 3,” recently shared some intriguing insights about the film’s development and his creative inspirations. The movie, which features Ryan Reynolds reprising his role as the wisecracking antihero Deadpool and Hugh Jackman returning as Wolverine, marks the first time the franchise is being produced under the Marvel Studios banner. However, the collaboration between Deadpool and Wolverine almost didn’t happen, and Levy’s journey to bring this iconic duo together is a story worth telling.
Levy, who is also working on a “Star Wars” project, revealed to Esquire that he drew inspiration from a specific moment in the “Star Wars” saga while working on “Deadpool 3.” He recalled the iconic scene from “Return of the Jedi” where Luke Skywalker confronts Darth Vader in the Emperor’s room. This moment, which created “pin-drop silence” in the theater, left a lasting impression on Levy. He described how Vader’s chilling line, “If you will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps your sister will,” resonated with him for decades.
During the production of “Deadpool 3,” Levy found himself revisiting this scene. He explained, “For one key scene in the movie, I said to my stunt and action team, ‘Guys, this is the Jedi moment.’ I pulled up that scene of Vader and Luke on my phone and restudied how it was photographed, how it was blocked, the framing, the tempo. The keen ‘Star Wars’ fan will see the shot in my ‘Deadpool’ movie that was inspired by a moment that I saw in a theater decades ago. That’s a forever memory. And that’s a treasure.”
The production of “Deadpool 3” is currently about halfway through filming, although it was paused due to the writer’s and actor’s strikes. As negotiations continue, there is hope that a resolution will be reached soon, allowing productions, including “Deadpool 3,” to resume.
Levy’s collaboration with Ryan Reynolds has been a fruitful one, with the two having worked together on previous projects like “Free Guy” and “The Adam Project.” Their close friendship has played a significant role in their creative synergy. Levy shared with PEOPLE, “Ryan and I have become extremely close friends. We live in New York City half a block from each other, so it’s all very intertwined — which makes it very convenient for two guys who work as hard as we do.”
Interestingly, it was Hugh Jackman who predicted the long and prosperous friendship between Levy and Reynolds. Levy recalled, “On the set of his 2011 movie ‘Real Steel,’ Hugh said, ‘For what it’s worth, if you ever meet and work with Ryan Reynolds, you’re never going to stop.’ That was 2010. Hugh Jackman, the prophet — a little known special talent.”
Levy and Reynolds’ collaboration on “Deadpool 3” has been driven by a shared philosophy of creating films that are both entertaining and heartfelt. Levy explained, “It was a script that was about video gaming, but we had other themes and messages in mind. And we just connected in terms of wanting to give audiences a movie that transports them, makes them laugh, and isn’t embarrassed about being big-hearted.”
“Deadpool 3” features Reynolds’ masked anti-hero forging a testy friendship with Jackman’s mutant, a character he first played in the 2000 film “X-Men” and had retired in 2017 before agreeing to join the next installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Levy emphasized that their new collaboration continues the philosophy he and Reynolds bonded over. “Maybe it’s our shared Canadian-ness,” he quipped. “Deadpool & Wolverine is funny as hell. It is audacious. It is action-packed and gnarly. But it’s ultimately a character journey of these two characters and it’s big-hearted in the telling of that story.”
Before receiving the Director of the Year Award at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Levy previewed a sequence of footage from “Deadpool & Wolverine.” The crowd glimpsed Reynolds’ Wade Wilson attempting to create a normal life before being convinced by Matthew Macfadyen’s Time Variance Authority agent to undergo a mission — one that relates to Disney’s Marvel properties themselves.
Following 2018’s “Deadpool 2,” the sequel marks Deadpool’s first official MCU entry. The previous installments were produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox prior to Disney’s purchase of the studio and rights to Deadpool and other X-Men characters.
As of April, Levy is still amid the editing process for “Deadpool & Wolverine.” He and Reynolds often discuss the character as if he were a separate entity. Levy shared, “We will talk about Deadpool as someone else. ‘Hey buddy, we can extend that shot of Deadpool here.’ He’s like, ‘No, I think we got to be on Deadpool a little longer.’ Because in the suit, in the mask, on screen, it becomes something else. It becomes, frankly for me, something bigger and more iconic. So we do occasionally use third person.”
The character’s larger-than-life presence will return to the big screen in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” set to hit theaters on July 26.
Source: Esquire, PEOPLE
