Deadpool writers talk sequel, Cable & being the underdog this awards season

I certainly don't need to tell you how much of a success DEADPOOL was, but I think many of us have been surprised to see the film racking up a variety of nominations during the awards season, including nods from the WGA and PGA as well as two nominations at the recent Golden Globe Awards. It's not that the film is bad, it's just that movies like DEADPOOL don't often pick up that kind of attention. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the writers of DEADPOOL, recently spoke with Deadline to discuss the movie, its upcoming sequel and feeling like an underdog during this awards season.

On what it's like to see DEADPOOL getting major awards recognition:

Paul Wernick: It’s really surreal. We’re pinching ourselves. Rhett and I have always wanted to don the tuxedos, and have a prestige play, and who would have thought that this would’ve been it? Self-deprecating, self-loathing anti-hero, who makes makes fart jokes, and swears, and does bad things. The other crazy thing is, how rare is it that a movie that made $783 million is kind of the underdog of the award season? [Laughs] It’s rare that a movie like this, that’s generally considered a popcorn type movie, gets recognized among such serious, great fare. So, it’s both surprising and exciting, and unexpected, and yet, so gratifying.

Rhett Reese: It’s hard to think of it as an underdog next to smaller budgeted movies, but next to the movies it competes with, it kind of was an underdog. It was a low budget studio movie of this kind. It took six years of uphill pushing to get the movie made. It’s R-rated, it’s very meta. It takes a fair amount of chances in the space it’s in, I think, both in the way it’s told, and just the nature of the character. It’s like the little movie that could, except I guess, it’s a big little movie that could. Particularly at this time of year, when you tend to see movies that are sort of classy, and they’re message movies. They tend to have a point, and they tend to make political points, and this just couldn’t be further from.

Where they're at with the DEADPOOL sequel and whether it will still be a stand-alone film:

Rhett Reese: Yeah, it’ll be a solo movie. It’ll be populated with a lot of characters, but it is still Deadpool’s movie, this next one. We’re pushing forward very hard. I think by every account we will shoot it this year, and we’re on our multiple draft now. It’s taken different twists and turns, but it’s really coalescing, and we’re very, very excited. We’re a little nervous, because now we feel like we have to live up to the first movie, but at the same time, we have to have faith, and we have an extreme passion still, and as long as we have passion still, and it’s not a mercenary, venal play, which we don’t think this is, I think we’ll be in good shape.

On whether putting Cable in DEADPOOL's post-credit sequence meant that they assumed they'd be getting a sequel:

Paul Wernick: We were like the athlete who guarantees victory before the game. [Laughs] It’s a world that’s so rich and we always thought Cable should be in the sequel. There was always debate whether to put him in the original, and it felt like we needed to set up Deadpool and create his world first, and then bring those characters into his world in the next one.

Both domestically and world-wide, DEADPOOL is the highest-grossing film in the X-MEN franchise, but so far there aren't any plans for the character to make any appearances in a "proper" X-MEN film, but both Reese and Wernick believe that it wouldn't be too hard to drop him into another movie. Although the rumours of Ryan Reynolds popping up as DEADPOOL in James Mangold's LOGAN were quickly debunked, Reynolds is still hoping to convince Hugh Jackman to strap on the claws one more time for a Deadpool/Wolverine team-up film.

The DEADPOOL sequel is set to hit theaters on January 12, 2018.