The Deadpool sequel began filming this week, and it’s shaping up to be one helluva party.
Set photos have already surfaced, giving fans vague clues as to what’s in store for the R-rated film, which will release on June 1, 2018.
Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson (that’s Deadpool’s boring human name) can be seen dressed down in a long-sleeved shirt and track pants, sporting his signature red-and-black mask as he crashes a children’s birthday party. He’s suspended mid-air, as though flying or landing belly-first onto a trampoline, and he’s surrounded by balloons and kids, which, if you know our beloved, foul-mouthed Deadpool at all, is bound to be a total disaster.
What else we know: the sequel will feature Josh Brolin as the time-travelling and telepathic Marvel character Cable, who can be found alongside Deadpool in the Cable & Deadpool comic series that kicked off in 2004. Zazie Beetz will play Domino. Shiori Kutsuna has also been cast.
ORIGIN STORY
Reynolds stars as the permanently disfigured and quick-witted Deadpool. It’s a role he spent 10 years trying to bring to the big screen. Several failed attempts and studio pushbacks later, it finally released in cinemas in 2016, receiving rave reviews. The film was a box-office success, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie in history. It garnered widespread critical acclaim, including two Golden Globe nominations.
The film served as an origin story for Deadpool, beginning with an introduction to him in his human form as Wilson, a Canadian-born mercenary and dishonourably discharged military operative working in New York City.
Wilson falls in love and becomes terminally ill, falling prey to a man who claims to have an unorthodox cure for cancer. But Wilson is injected with a serum and tortured instead. He emerges from the whole ordeal with permanent scarring all over his face and body, and a mutant healing power that cures his cancer and any other injury thrown his way.
From there, Deadpool is born — an insolent anti-hero known as the Merc with the Mouth due to his inability to keep his mouth shut.
He also has a tendency to break the fourth wall and converse with the audience — the post-credit scene was basically just Deadpool telling us all to leave the theatre and go home.
GOING FORWARD
The sequel is known so far as Deadpool 2. Reynolds (also Canadian) posted a snap of himself earlier this month in full costume lying down in front of the famed X-Mansion — a training site for X-Men and a common punchline for Deadpool’s gags. “Now filming Deadpool 2: Xavier’s Lust,” Reynolds joked.
The sequel will be directed by David Leitch (John Wick) who took over from Tim Miller. Miller reportedly left the franchise over creative differences.
Reynolds told EW that, going forward, he wants to stick to the tone, scale and style that set Deadpool apart from other big budget, highly stylised superhero flicks.
“That’s the biggest mandate going into on the second film: to not make it bigger. We have to resist the temptation to make it bigger in scale and scope, which is normally what you do when you have a surprise hit movie. But actually stay true to the tenets of its [story and] the tone and the style and the humour that make it so special — it’s not the explosions and the special effects,” he said.
Reynolds took to Facebook yesterday with a clapperboard and the caption, “Day one. Maximum Effort 2.0,” referencing his nonsensical catchphrase from the first movie. Fans have since managed to find one instance of the phrase being used in the comics in 2009.
