Credit: 20th Century PicturesHalle Berry could have (and would have!) returned as Storm of the X-Men for Deadpool & Wolverine, but it sounds like Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds pulled a quick bait-and-switch on the Academy Award-winning actress.
Deadpool & Wolverine was initially presented to Marvel fans as the entry point of the X-Men into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe, an event so eagerly anticipated that even She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) was sounding off about it. While the Shawn Levy-directed film did ultimately end up with some confusing crossover between various X-Men members and the Sacred Timeline, it turns out that the movie was not exactly the mutant-fest that audiences were expecting.
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Instead, Deadpool & Wolverine was something of a combined love letter and farewell to the Fox franchise of Marvel Comics adaptations. The movie, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman as the title characters, bade an emotional goodbye to the former X-Men, Daredevil, Blade, and Fantastic Four franchises, ending with a long, behind-the-scenes look at all of the movies that came before.
The film also featured supporting performances from Jennifer Garner as Elektra, Chris Evans as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, Wesley Snipes as Blade, and Channing Tatum as Gambit, a role he had never actually played but came years close to realizing. Prior to the film’s release, it was heavily rumored to include numerous X-Men actors like Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, and, yes, Halle Berry.
Halle Berry portrayed Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm, the weather-controlling mutant superhero in four X-Men movies, beginning with the self-titled 2000 film directed by Bryan Singer. Unlike her co-star Hugh Jackman, she hasn’t been back in character since X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), but it turns out that she totally would have been in Deadpool & Wolverine, if she hadn’t gotten such mixed messages from Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.
Berry recently told Comic Book that there had been no formal talks about her joining the cast of Deadpool & Wolverine, but that “Blake [Lively] asked me one time, I ran into her at a Marc Jacobs fashion show, and she said, ‘Would you ever be in my husband’s movie as Storm?’ I said, ‘Yeah, if he asked me,’ but he never asked me.”
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It is unknown what breakdown in communication between the Gossip Girl star and her husband, the Marvel Studios star and Aviation Gin co-owner, prevented Halle Berry from getting the call. It is possible that there just wasn’t space for more X-Men or that Ryan Reynolds was too busy writing scenes for other movies (without the actual screenwriter’s knowledge, apparently) to give her a call. There is also the chance that the long-rumored, never-confirmed bad blood between Berry and Wesley Snipes might have something to do with it, but who knows?
Marvel Studios has been playing its cards extremely close to its chest when it comes to the X-Men and there is still no clear indication when the world’s greatest mutant superhero team will actually enter the MCU. But it seems the possibility of Halle Berry showing up is there, as long as you actually ask her.
What X-Men members did you want to see in Deadpool & Wolverine?