‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ spoiler orgy: Shawn Levy on cameos and box-office success

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Deadpool & Wolverine.

Months ago, when Entertainment Weekly began one of multiple conversations with director Shawn Levy about Deadpool & Wolverine, we made a promise to the filmmaker behind the now-record-breaking box-office hit: If we ever sat down again for a more open conversation about all of the film’s spoilers, we’d call it “spoiler orgy.”

And here we are. It’s time for the Deadpool & Wolverine spoiler orgy.

As of Sunday morning, the movie, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman as the titular duo, grossed a cumulative total of $395.6 million domestically and $824.1 million globally after just two weeks in movie theaters. It’s already the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever.

Promising some of the most high-profile surprise cameos and guest stars, even for a Marvel movie, Levy & Co. delivered with the likes of Chris Evans‘ return as Johnny Storm from the Fox-era Fantastic Four duology, Wesley Snipes‘ return as Daywalker vampire hunter Blade, Jennifer Garner‘s return as sai-wielding Elektra, and even Henry Cavill and Channing Tatum stepping into the shoes of Wolverine variant “Cavillrine” and Gambit, respectively.

Speaking with EW in the days following the cast’s big Comic-Con panel in San Diego, Levy talks about all of it, from breaking the slump of what the press dubbed “superhero fatigue,” to dominating the box office, to the most standout moments of Deadpool & Wolverine.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I hope you’re still basking in the glow of that Hall H Comic-Con panel and all the work you put into the movie.

SHAWN LEVY: I am basking. I mean, we were already basking yesterday, but then we started hearing overnight that actually Disney had been conservative and we were doing more business on Sunday than they expected. So this has been certainly the thrill of my career by a lot. 

In the face of all this talk of superhero fatigue, you guys have a record-breaking opening for an R-rated movie.

It’s thrilling. It’s really affirming. And, look, every time someone has asked me, “What about superhero fatigue?” I’ve held to this conviction that people just want to be surprised. They want something unexpected and new, and I feel like we certainly devoted ourselves to delivering that. So the way it’s been embraced, and especially that audience score, this is what I work for. I work for audience satisfaction.

Let’s start by talking about a lot of the guest appearances. Were there any actors that you went out for and tried to get, but for one of the multitude of reasons that can pop up in movie planning, they just couldn’t fit for whatever reason? 

There was a brief moment where maybe we were debating which Juggernaut. There was a Vinnie Jones conversation that didn’t really go very far. [Jones featured as Juggernaut in 2008’s X-Men: The Last Stand.] But other than that, everybody we asked said yes and somehow made the time. Jen, Channing, Dafne [Keen, returning as X-23 from 2017’s Logan], and Wesley, they flew to England a week before shooting on their own volition and desire because they wanted to learn and do the choreography of the action themselves. They came a week early right away showing a level of enthusiasm that is not at all the norm for someone who’s just doing a so-called cameo. Then the day before they shot, the actors’ strike happened, so they all had to ship home. They all came back months later with that same enthusiasm. That right there says everything people need to know about the spirit that went into making this movie.

You worked with Jen on The Adam Project. You worked with Chris on Free Guy. Do you feel having those relationships already built in were big stepping stones into getting them back for this movie?

I’m really convinced there’s too much about this movie that feels destined or at the very least informed by good karma. The outreach to Jen was so comfortable and so easy. It’s ironic that Ryan first asked me to direct this movie on the set of The Adam Project. Jen, in fact, reminded me in San Diego that she remembers overhearing us talking about another Deadpool movie on the set in Vancouver. And Chris showed up for us in Free Guy. He and Ryan had done cameos back and forth [for each other’s projects], I believe. Chris — like Channing, Wesley, Henry, and so many — started with Ryan and I in our writing room coming up with a zany notion and shooting a text on the spot. That was how 90 percent of that surprise casting got done. That simple, that quick.

Henry Cavill fans were dream-casting him as Wolverine over the years. How close you were paying attention to what the fans have been talking about in the zeitgeist for years?

Ryan may have been a little more fluent in that. I was pretty ignorant of that dream-casting of the Cavill, but when we were working on this script, it was quite recently after the whole infamous meeting that Henry had at DC and the fact that he was no longer going to continue on as Superman. We were just thinking about how Deadpool movies are always in dialogue with culture, and it was really on the heels of that DC decision that Ryan and I were like, “Wait! How cool would that be?” Then as soon as Ryan dubbed it “the Cavillrine” — which you’ll note in the end credits is how Henry is credited…I’m really hoping that term sticks, even though Hugh Jackman’s job does now feel quite secure — it was more in response to that and just being able to play with this whole perceived turf war between comic book labels and studios. 

For Chris specifically, what was your impression seeing him on set for the first time, just really embracing the energy that Ryan and Hugh were throwing down?

We expected that Chris might need a bunch of takes because that was a page of super dirty, mile-a-minute language. Chris came in, was off book, banged it out in two takes, had us pissing with laughter, and that’s what you see in the movie. I think Chris had a blast, and I know our movie benefits from Chris playing Johnny very differently from Cap. Gone is the righteous nobility and cleanliness of Captain America. This is a Boston-inflected, Chris Evans-inspired Johnny Storm. I feel like it’s more Chris than the original Chris Evans. Chris is a Boston boy. I’d have to go back and watch the original Fantastic Four, but I don’t think he played Johnny as the Boston boy that he did in Deadpool & Wolverine — and to me it is perfection.

Moving on to another topic of conversation that came up with this movie: How do you feel in hindsight about all of the Taylor Swift discourse that was going on in the lead-up?

It was so very loud. I definitely had moments where I was worried I would disappoint people when they realized Taylor as Dazzler was not in the movie, but there’s no controlling the internet, and rumors spread like wildfire. It was never a conversation. It was never even a seed of a discussion. Obviously, Ryan and Blake, and myself, to a far lesser extent, have our own relationships in real life with Taylor. But, yeah, those rumors were loud and slightly baffling, but nothing I said or did was going to make them quiet down until this movie came out.

I also saw The Adam Project star Walker Scobell at the New York premiere, and I know he loves Deadpool. He was another one that a lot of fans were hoping to see in this movie. Did you ever have conversations with him about it? 

If Walker Scobell had stopped evolving right before puberty, he absolutely would’ve been Kidpool. It was his dream. Ryan and I reached out to him once we realized he was now going to be too old, both too tall and with his voice too low. Puberty is what it is, and all the Hollywood dreams in the world can’t stop it. So we did call Walker and explain why he couldn’t be Kidpool, and he was completely understanding. My long reunion hug with Walker at the premiere in New York was one of my favorite parts of that whole night.

This leads me into my favorite scene in the entire movie: the Deadpool Corps.’ arrival that looked like a really chaotic sequence to channel into one tracking shot. How did you plan that four-minute one-shot? Did you storyboard it?

That is the single most complicated shot in the movie. It’s the most complicated shot I have ever done in any movie, and, frankly, it’s more complicated than most shots any of us will ever see in any movie. It took nine months of preparation, starting with the idea, which was always one laterally-tracking shot, always left to right, always in our mind set to “Like a Prayer.” It aspired to be an ecstatic symphony of violence. It started with storyboards. Those evolved into pre-visualization, where you animate the storyboards. Then the next big hurdle was, let’s get 50 stunt people and figure out how we’re going to do this with real humans and bodies in space because those are not digi-doubles. Those are real fighters the whole way through. Then the big fly in the ointment is: What happens when you rehearse no longer in sweats but in the suits? The body doesn’t move the same way. It took hundreds of teammates to figure it out and pull it off. It’s one of our great prides.

Knowing you and Ryan, there are always moments where, maybe it’s not written in the script, but you end up finding magic together in the heat of the moment. Were there moments like that that occurred for this big tracking shot for the Deadpool Corps.? 

A lot of it was scripted. I do want to give credit to the entire section in the bus through that shot. That was our storyboard artist, Jeremy Simser. That bus section and the idea of the windows getting increasingly obscured with blood splatter, that was Jeremy. I mention it because I really think the key to directing is to be loose enough that you are open to the best possible idea regardless of where it comes from. I am a great beneficiary of tremendous creativity from the whole team. The one thing that I recall being a later add is Ryan fumbling and tapping off this glorious epic action sequence with a very clumsy dismount, and then Deadpool commenting on his God-awful dismount because we could have just ended it with superhero glory, but somehow that’s not quite Deadpool. You always want to zig when the expectation is for the genre to zag.

Are there other more general moments where you found things in the moment?

So many. I don’t know that there is a scene that didn’t benefit from inspiration sometimes on the shooting day, sometimes in the edit room, sometimes in the scoring stage. Off the very top of my head, certainly Deadpool turning to Wolverine and saying, “Welcome to the MCU. By the way, you’re joining at a bit of a low point.” That was Ryan’s inspiration. Similarly, his speech to the Deadpool Corps. about miss after miss after miss: “Let’s just take the L and move on.” And then Ryan improvising his Nicepool in response to his improvisation, “I think it’s been steadily uphill since Endgame.” Those are two of probably a thousand inspired adds. One other one that’s less comedic but really defined so much in the movie: We were shooting the scene where Wolverine is having compassion for Cassandra Nova. The scripted line was, “I’m wearing the suit, that means I’m an X-Man.” While we were filming the take, I remembered what Deadpool had said in the diner. So I called out during the take to Hugh from behind the camera. Hugh got very choked up and repeated a line after me, and that ended up defining the tone of that scene.

You have so many lines in this movie where I was like, “I can’t believe they just did that.” I’m thinking of the joke about Hugh’s divorce, the Ben Affleck/Daredevil and Jennifer Garner stuff. Was there ever a joke where you thought maybe we shouldn’t do this one?

Well, the general rule is to never punch down and to only take the piss out of people who can take it. Certainly, when it was about Hugh in a meta way, Hugh was always the first to laugh uproariously. There was only one line in the entire movie that we were asked to change. We have made a pact, Ryan and I, to go to our grave with that line, but I will say that it was replaced with an equally dirty line of dialogue about Pinocchio shoving his face up Deadpool’s ass and starting to lie like crazy. I was like, ‘Ryan, that’s your replacement line in response to, ‘Can we clean it up?’ That’s Ryan Reynolds for you, audacious to the very edge.

In terms of the ending, you bring back Dafne Keen as X-23 again, and it very clearly leaves the pathway open for the X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How much coordination did you have to have with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige to make this bit within the trajectory of what they’re planning? 

I have to be honest with you, we really set out to make a movie that was not a setup for another movie or a sequel to anything. Kevin never insisted that we service some story beyond. I’ve been asked, for instance, why is Thor crying. The answer being: I don’t f—ing know. No one does, but I’d sure love to be the guy who helps find out why. But, yes, we see X-23 at the end. Logan has opted to stay in Deadpool’s world. Laura’s presence there at the final pizza party implies that others might have made it out of the Void. But as for what’s beyond, I genuinely don’t know. I genuinely hope and intend to be a part of telling those stories. We never once were asked to service a broader storyline or phase. To this day, I couldn’t tell you what phase our movie is in. Is it like 14? I sincerely couldn’t tell you.

You said on the red carpet a while back that you don’t think your partnership with Marvel has ended at this point. Have there been any new developments since the red carpet? 

Nothing in an official way. Just so much shared respect and affection between really all of us. Ryan and I as co-writers, as producers, and as star and director, we had the time of our life making this thing. It was certainly before the outcome was mind-blowingly great. So Kevin and Lou [D’Esposito, Marvel Studios co-president] and I, all of us have talked about what might come next. I am now even more confident than I was on that red carpet that Marvel and I are not done with each other.

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