The cost-cutting actions enforced by 20th Century Fox on Deadpool have already become the stuff of legend. Not only did the blockbuster have a miniscule budget in comparison to its other comic-book brethren, but various characters and scenes were forced to be cut because of the lack of money provided. It has now been revealed that this even stretched to having the film's writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese on the set, but rather than going without them, Ryan Reynolds decided to pay for them to be there himself.
Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese made this admission on the latest episode of AMC's Geeking Out (via ComicBook.com). The pair revealed that Ryan Reynolds knew how integral they'd been in bringing Deadpool to the big-screen, and wanted them along for the ride in case there were any hiccups during production. They remarked:
We were on set every day. Interestingly, Ryan wanted us there, we were on the project for six years. It was really a core creative team of us, Ryan, and the director Tim Miller. Fox interestingly wouldn't pay for us to be on set. Ryan Reynolds paid out of his own money, out of his own pocket.
This isn't the first time that Ryan Reynolds' generosity on the set of Deadpool has been revealed. Because of the restrictions put on the blockbuster's production, Reynolds also decided to spend $10,000 of his own cash just so the film could use an image of Bea Arthur from the Golden Girls, a character that Wade Wilson is obsessed with in the comics.
There were some aspects of the film that Ryan Reynolds and his wallet couldn't save, though. As writer Paul Wernick explained to Cinemablend at the time of the film's release, the character of Patch, who in the comics hands out the mercenary assignments to Deadpool, was folded into T.J. Miller's Weasel just so there were fewer characters and fewer scenes to budget for.
The biggest alteration, though, came just before production on the blockbuster was due to begin when 20th Century Fox suddenly decided to pull $7 million from the budget. This translated to Deadpool losing nine pages worth of action from the script, and so out of the window went a motorcycle chase between Deadpool and Ajax on the freeway and a huge gun fight in the final act, too. That's why Deadpool forgets his guns going into the battle, and instead leaves them behind in the taxi.
Fortunately, rather than being overly perturbed and furiously angry about the huge reductions and changes that they needed to make to the film at such short notice, Ryan Reynolds is the first to admit that it allowed them to mold the film in the exact way that they wanted without the studio overly interfering in its tone. Considering that Deadpool went on to gross $782. 6 million at the box office, I'm guessing that they'll be allowed to splash the cash any which way they want for Deadpool 2, though.
