In this FandomWire Video Essay, we explore how test footage leaks made Deadpool possible.
Check out the video below:
Subscribe & hit the Notification Bell so you never miss a video!
Deadpool Test Footage
THIS… almost didn’t happen. Though Deadpool as a character has achieved incredible mainstream popularity over the years and his third live-action film, Deadpool and Wolverine, is set to dominate the summer box office, the Merc With A Mouth has come a long way to get to where he is now. While the over-the-top violence and zany, fourth-wall-breaking sense of humor in the Deadpool comics made him a fan favorite fairly quickly, that particular combination also made him too niche and too weird for a big-screen adaptation in the eyes of Hollywood executives.
Indeed, the first Deadpool movie went through several hurdles on the way to its eventual 2016 release. Multiple script changes and disputes with the studio plagued the project that was already only given the greenlight thanks to, of all things, test footage leaked by a to-this-day unknown source. So, with so much working against it, how did Deadpool even get made, let alone end up as good as it is? Well, sharpen your katanas and warm up some chimichangas as we dive into Deadpool’s tumultuous development and production, and how test footage leaks made the whole thing possible.
The first seeds of what would eventually become the first Deadpool movie were actually planted in the pages of Cable and Deadpool #2 in February 2004, twelve years before the film’s release. In the comic, Deadpool refers to himself as “a cross between Ryan Reynolds and a sharpei” a call-out that quickly gained the attention and admiration of Reynolds himself, who had been sent a stack of Deadpool comics by then-New Line Cinema executive Jeff Katz during development on Blade: Trinity because, as Katz revealed to MTV in a 2008 interview “Ryan Reynolds is, I think, the only guy who can play that character. He is that character.”
While that version of the film ultimately didn’t pan out due to rights issues, Ryan Reynolds became and remained a massive Deadpool fan; determined to play the character on screen. And while he would finally get that chance in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it was under less-than-ideal circumstances. That film’s version of the character lacked the traditional, physically deformed appearance, healing factor, and fourth-wall breaking; though some of his trademark wit remained intact. Instead, the character is portrayed as not having any powers for most of the movie, until being transformed into the hodgepodge of mutant abilities known as Weapon XI for the climax and to add insult to injury, has his mouth sewn shut; which as WIRED’s Rachel Edidin points out, “kind of fundamentally misses the point of the Merc With A Mouth.”
Wolverine’s $373 million box office return did convince Fox to let Ryan Reynolds move forward with a more faithful Deadpool spin-off film, bringing in frequent collaborators Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to write the screenplay and VFX and animation veteran Tim Miller to direct in 2010. However, the creative team’s insistence on an R-rating led to frequent disputes between the production and Fox executives. And when Reynolds’ Green Lantern film bombed both critically and financially in 2011, the project appeared to be dead in the water.
Fox gave Tim Miller one last chance in 2012, allowing him to produce a CGI test reel with his animation company, Blur Studio, to convince executives to give Deadpool a shot. The footage, a prototype of the final film’s opening highway fight, perfectly captures the irreverent tone the team was going for and that would ultimately be presented in the final film. The footage also includes several jokes that made the final cut such as the “Red suit/brown pants” gag, the “Angel” needle drop, and Deadpool’s crayon drawing of himself killing the bad guy. Deadpool even closes off the footage with “Hi, Tom!,” in reference to the at-the-time 20th Century Fox CEO: Tom Rothman.
But the studio remained uninterested, shifting focus to putting Deadpool in a team-up film after the success of The Avengers. Then, two years later, everything changed. In July 2014, the footage was anonymously leaked online, uploaded to YouTube, and received near universal acclaim, prompting Fox to finally green-light Deadpool, R-rating and all, for a February 2016 release.
So, who leaked it? Well, that’s much harder to answer. The original video and most of its re-uploads were all quickly taken down by Fox for copyright reasons and no one involved in the production has ever publicly admitted to leaking it. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon to promote the film, Ryan Reynolds said, “There’s four of us: me, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and Tim Miller, the director. We all said at the beginning that someone should leak it, so the idea was planted, but I’m 70 percent sure it wasn’t me.” Given that the leak was intended to push the studio into making the movie, it being an inside job does seem likely. And amongst those four, Tim Miller, a then 50-year-old working on his directorial debut, had the least to lose and the most to gain from the leak. But he’s never confirmed this. Many speculate that it could’ve been another employee at Blur Studio, while others believe that it was in fact Ryan Reynolds and he merely denied it to keep himself out of trouble with the studio.
Regardless of who actually leaked the footage, the aforementioned universal acclaim and enthusiastic response to said footage was impossible to ignore. We Got This Covered’s Matt Donato wrote at the time that “this test footage rules, representing everything I want in a Deadpool movie” and you can find articles and videos from nearly every prominent geek culture publication from this period echoing similar sentiments. However, despite all this praise and long-awaited permission to make the film the way they wanted, Deadpool would face at least one more major hurdle before finally arriving on the big screen.
Remember in the third act of the movie when Deadpool stuffs a comically absurd amount of weapons into a duffel bag before confronting Francis, but then accidentally leaves said bag in the cab? It’s a funny scene to be sure, but do you know the real reason it’s there? Well, just two days before the official green light, Fox cut down the film’s budget from the proposed, already lower than average for a superhero movie, $65 million, to just $58 million. So, as screenwriter Rhett Resse explained to Gizmodo in 2016 “we had Deadpool basically forget his guns as a means of getting around” having to do an expensive Act 3 gunfight. Coincidentally, this is also why many of the other X-Men characters considered for the film, such as Cannonball and Garrison Kane among others, were eventually consolidated into Francis’ henchmen, Angel Dust.
The Deadpool movie seemed to have everything working against it for a very long time. Two critically reviled superhero roles in a role for its star, one of which was as Deadpool, studio executives unwilling to bankroll such a risky project the way it was intended, it seemed like the universe was screaming at the creative team to give up on the idea altogether. But through it all, Reynolds, Reese, Wernick, and Miller persisted. And when Deadpool did finally release, it was an instant massive hit, grossing over $782 million on its meager $58 million budget and scoring extremely positive reviews from critics and audiences, with NME’s Nick Levine praising the “stylishly salty antidote to bloated recent superhero movies.”
Two years later, Deadpool 2 received similar critical and commercial success; and now, Deadpool and Wolverine looks like it’ll give the franchise yet another win, this time under the umbrella of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And to think it all started with that leaked test footage. Without some brave soul, be that Tim Miller, Ryan Reynolds, or someone else entirely, putting that footage up for the world to see, Deadpool probably never would’ve been given the shot it deserved and the landscape of superhero movies and blockbusters overall would likely look very different. Given the indecision by the studio prior and the overwhelmingly positive response afterwards, it’s undeniable that this infamous leaked test footage played a key role in making Deadpool possible.
Now, we want to hear from you, true believers. Do you think the test footage leaks helped Deadpool get made? Who do you think leaked the footage? And what’s your favorite moment in the franchise so far? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe and ring that notification bell so you can see future videos like this as soon as they go up. Until next time, thanks for watching.
Follow us for more entertainment coverage on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
