Credit: Marvel StudiosUnless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few days, you’ll know that Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) is one of the year’s highest-grossing films, breaking down records and barriers as the two heroes tear up the screen. You might also be wondering how on earth they got Disney to approve a movie that was that gratuitous and gory.
In this meta-comedy, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) find themselves on a timeline-hopping journey across the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where they are forced to work together to save the Multiverse from the chaotic forces of Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin). While the movie was far from high-brow entertainment, it proved to be one of the biggest successes for both Marvel and Disney.
Ryan Reynolds made it blatantly clear months ago that he planned to “make enemies with Disney” after the Deadpool sequel’s trailer dropped, and the movie took more than a few shots at both Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company. In the footage below, Reynolds, Jackman and director Shawn Levy describe in great detail how they managed to beat the mouse and make the script work.
Deadpool & Wolverine Takes On Disney
As the MCU’s first official R-rated entry, Deadpool and Wolverine was bound to ruffle a few feathers from the start. However, when Ryan Reynolds made the following statement in the movie’s promo material, it was a dead giveaway that this would be unlike anything the franchise had seen before.
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Reynolds said,
“This film is as paper-thin as a sequel to ‘Battlefield Earth.’ We’re mostly going to beat each other senseless, make enemies with Disney, tell a few dick jokes, make a few jokes at my expense, make a lot of jokes at Hugh’s expense, and completely sidestep Marvel’s mandated after-credits sequence, which if you haven’t figured it out yet, is always just a commercial for another movie which will invariably end with a commercial for another movie. So sit back, relax, let us lower your IQ, and raise your heart rate while we travel to a vapid Dreamland, a place where grown men and grown women walk around in tights and act like it’s not a giant cultural cry for help. This is cinema.”
To say the actor kept his word would be a grand and glorious understatement, and the film was as vapidly excessive and profane as expected and then some. However, the real question is how Disney reacted, a question discussed in etalk’s footage below.
@etalkctv Soo, how many jokes did Disney tell Ryan Reynolds to remove from ‘Deadpool and Wolverine?’ 👀 The stars and director of the iconic Marvel film explained how they were able to get away with the raunchy jokes and jabs to Disney in the script. 😅 #RyanReynolds #HughJackman #ShawnLevy #DeadpoolAndWolverine #Interview #Disney #Marvel #Comedy
In their interview, etalk asked the three figureheads behind the new Deadpool sequel if there were any jokes or scenes that didn’t make it past Disney’s approval, and it seems like even they were surprised by just how much content the studio let them keep in the movie. Director Shawn Levy put it best when he said,
“We were like the good boy students turning in our script every once in a while, and every time we would send a script, we were like kinda waiting, and the pushback never came. It became clear that, on this movie, funny wins.”
Everyone Has a Price
Funny wins and money talks, and Disney clearly knew what to expect when the studio let the team of Levy and Reynolds wreak havoc across the script for this visceral, violent, lewd and crude entry into the MCU. Of course, the House of Mouse also makes no secret about that fact either.
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At the end of the film, viewers will see the words “Distributed by The Walt Disney Company” in big white letters after the credits. Except for one line (according to Reynolds), Disney approved every F-bomb, every dirty joke, and even that insane opening sequence of Deadpool bashing the TVA agents with Old Man Logan’s skeletal remains.
Deadpool is clearly against everything The Walt Disney Company stands for, and he’s practically the living antithesis. That said, it’s somewhat comforting to know that Disney can take more than a few jokes at its expense, especially when it lines the studio’s pockets.
What was your favorite joke in Deadpool? Tell Inside the Magic in the comments below!