‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ team felt practical sets were worth the leaks

If you’ve been on “Marvel fan Twitter” at any point in the past year, chances are you caught at least one glimpse of something spoiler-y from the Deadpool & Wolverine film sets. When the crew touched down in the U.K., paparazzi swarmed — even leaking photos of Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman back in their super suits, which prompted director Shawn Levy to release his own official first-look photo of the guys back together on screen after 15 years.

“We saw the wave of imagery coming from sources that weren’t sanctioned. So we immediately decided on the fly in the middle of a shoot to take a proper picture that would give the world a proper introduction to these costumes,” Levy tells Entertainment Weekly.

The paparazzi photos that leaked showed Reynolds’ Deadpool and Jackman’s Wolverine shooting an action sequence involving a host of characters in a clay quarry in London, then again walking the countryside in South England. But these leaks, as far as Levy and the team are concerned, were worth it.

“It’s been really challenging because, long before our first day of shooting, Ryan and I, with [Marvel President] Kevin Feige‘s blessing, made a decision as producers to have this movie look and shoot different than most other MCU movies,” Levy explains. “That meant limited sound stages, limited green screen, and way, way more practical scenes shot in real-world exterior locations. With that decision came risk, and that risk was illustrated on day 1, shooting in a quarry where a phalanx of paparazzi was perched up above on a hillside. That’s the price we paid for wanting a movie that felt grounded and real. And I will tell you, that’s a price we’re comfortable paying when it comes to some of the secrets and surprises in the movie.”

Deadpool & Wolverine is a formal introduction of Wade Wilson, Logan, and the mutants of Marvel Comics to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. Six years after the events of 2018’s Deadpool 2, Wade is living a low-key life as a car salesman… at which point agents from the Time Variance Authority snatch him up and bring him to their boss, Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen). What follows is a jaunt across the Marvel multiverse as the Merc With a Mouth charts a course that brings him together with Wolverine. Well, a Wolverine. Not the same Wolverine that appeared in the previous X-Men movies, but a Wolverine variant from an alternate reality.

Emma Corrin will play Cassandra Nova, an immensely powerful telepath and telekinetic, and the villainous twin of Professor Charles Xavier. There are also past Deadpool actors returning to their roles, including Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, Rob Delaney as Peter, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Karan Soni as Dopinder, Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Shioli Kutsuna as Yukio, Stefan Kapičić as Colossus, and Lewis Tan as Shatterstar.

Among the surprise cameos threatened to be exposed by those paparazzi leaks, the only ones officially confirmed so far ahead of the film are Aaron Stanford as Pyro, Tyler Mane as Sabretooth, Dafne Keen as X-23/Laura, and Loki star Wunmi Mosaku as Verity Willis/B-15.

“The anticipation of it is pretty crazy,” costume designer Graham Churchyard said. “I worked on a number of superhero films. Everyone wants to see what Thor’s going to look like next or Captain America or Black Widow, but I think this is possibly one of the biggest things to hit the world for some time.”

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He, too, has thoughts on those leaks: “When the first paparazzi photos were leaked, people were freaking out going, ‘Oh my God! He’s got sleeves. He can’t have sleeves. What’s going to happen here? He has no mask,'” he says, referring to Jackman’s Wolverine. “I just wanted to chip in on Instagram to say, ‘It’s a story! It’s a development. It’s his first appearance. You have to tell the whole story of his transition.'”

We’ll see that development on screen in theaters this Friday.