Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have become known in recent years for their collaborative writing projects such as Zombieland, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and Life. Now they’ve joined forces again to deliver us some more of our favorite Marvel Comics mercenary in Deadpool 2, which is now in theaters.
Screen Rant spoke with Reese and Wernick on press day, where we discussed how putting Deadpool into an ensemble made him more effective as a character, what sort of emotional growth was injected into the character, and whether or not Life is actually a Venom prequel.
SR: Brilliant job, guys!
Paul Wernick: Thank you.
SR: I think you upped the ante from the first one. I love the heart of this movie. So how does putting Deadpool on an ensemble make him more effective this time around?
Rhett Reese: Well, he just gets more people to bounce off of. You know, Deadpool is a little bit of a s*** disturber. Am I allowed to swear? I’m going to go ahead and do it. And so, it’s nice to have people to react to that and have to deal with this annoying, ridiculous idiot.
SR: So, Deadpool, his ethics are barely defined and he can do anything at any time. What challenges the character to make him grow this time around?
Paul Wernick: Well, it’s emotional growth. I think Deadpool is like this little kid. We’ve always pictured him as this kid in an adult’s body and it’s the emotional growth of him going through life and its pitfalls and him growing because of that. This is Deadpool finding a family at the end of this movie and, so we had to take away everything he had at the very beginning and watch him grow over the course of the movie.
SR: During the build up of this film, we had a lot of great cameos like David Beckham and Celine Dion did the song. There are a lot of great cameos in this film as well. How did those come about and were those already in the script or were they like we got so and so?
Rhett Reese: Vanisher was a late add. It was the very last thing we shot on the Deadpool movie. Brad Pitt came to set. He agreed to play Vanisher in return for scale, which is a very low number, a low salary, and a cup of coffee from Starbucks delivered to him by Ryan Reynolds. So Ryan had to hand over the coffee to Brad in order for him to do that part. He came in. He was willing to do it because his kids loved Deadpool and he’s a great guy and Ryan just asked him and he said yes. Next thing you know - boom - he’s standing there. We had a ton of fun. It was about a half an hour shoot and he was on his way. It really adds a fun moment. You can hear the people gasp.
Paul Wernick: Yeah. The first movie, you know, a lot of people said no to us.
SR: Really?
Paul Wernick: A lot of people. Yeah. And this one, everyone we asked, it was yes. It felt like we had been given the keys to the castle.
SR: Last time I talked to you guys was at Life. So, I wanted to clear up a little geek urban legend here. Life is not the official prequel to Venom.
Rhett Reese: It is not.
SR: However, was there any influence from Venom that you guys took from Life? Any homages or overlaps at all?
Rhett Reese: Not really. No. Because, for one, it would be a rights issue because Venom was a Marvel property obviously and controlled by Sony. Life was actually Sony, so maybe it wasn’t a rights issue. I take it back.
Paul Wernick: Yes. The answer is yes. Prequel.
Rhett Reese: [laughs]
SR: Which X-Force character would you like to have their own spinoff besides Cable and Domino? Who do you think would be a lot of fun?
Paul Wernick: Peter!
Rhett Reese: Yeah. We want Peter to have his own movie.
SR: I think Peter would be a lot of fun.
Rhett Reese: Yeah. It could get a little boring. I mean, he’s out behind the house doing his beekeeping and working on payroll during the day and stuff like that.
SR: Buying khakis maybe?
Rhett Reese: Yeah. Buying some khakis. Going to J. Crew to buy some dockers. But yeah, we’d love to see more of Peter.
Paul Wernick: And probably will.
