Ryan Reynolds Says ‘I Let Go of Getting Paid’ on ‘Deadpool’ and ‘Took the Little Salary I Had Left’ to Pay for the Screenwriters to Be on Set
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director Ryan Reynolds recently spoke to The New York Times ahead of the release of “Deadpool and Wolverine” and remembered the humble beginnings of his R-rated superhero franchise.
The actor said the first “Deadpool” movie finally got off the ground at 20th Century Fox after he’d already spent a decade trying to get it made.
Reynolds even paid out of pocket for his screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to be on set because the scrappier production was not that of a normal comic book tentpole. “No part of me was thinking when ‘Deadpool’ was finally greenlit that this would be a success,” Reynolds said. “I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen: They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.” “It was a lesson in a couple of senses,” Reynolds continued. “I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money.
It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie. I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time.
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