If you’ve seen Deadpool and Wolverine, you’ll likely walk away believing the character truly wasn’t reigned in under Disney‘s stewardship, after all. However, during a recent interview with Collider, Ryan Reynolds confirmed there was one joke the company suggested be removed–and it apparently had something to do with Deadpool’s butt.
According to Reynolds, “there was a note about this one line, and I’ll say this, which is that I was asked to take the line out. I was not even mandated to take the line out. To quote someone in a very high position of leadership at Disney, ‘I’m in for a penny, I’m in for a pound. And if you take it out, I’d love it. If you don’t, I will still love and support you, this movie and all the hard work that went into it.’ So, come on. At that point you go, ‘Do I want to stick with pride? Do I care? Am I going to die on a hill over one joke?’ Look, the answer is of course I’m going to die on a hill over one joke, but then you sober up a few weeks later.”
It was at this point in the interview director Shawn Levy decided to interject. “Many weeks later. My buddy Ryan is one stubborn son of a bitch. It took weeks for the ground to soften, and we’re going to take that joke to the grave… I’ll say that the joke that was written to replace the changed joke is not only as good a joke, but maybe even smarter. And I wonder if we give away anything about the slot where it existed, Ryan?”
The replacement joke, it turns out, had a Disney theme anyway. “The intelligence and merit of the joke is certainly debatable, but it’s the Pinocchio joke. You know? ‘I got Pinocchio jammed in my ass, and he’s lying like crazy’… that replaced what was there before, and I’m not losing any sleep over it,” Reynolds revealed. “When they ask that one thing, and they’ve just been partners at that level, which is rare in this business and people who put their faith and trust in us to not only make a movie responsibly and finish on time and on budget and get a day and a half of reshoots–which we’re both super proud of. For any movie that’s extraordinary, but particularly a comic book movie, you got to take that stuff to heart, and you got to be a good partner. And we want to be good partners always.”
So, this naturally begs the question: what exactly did Deadpool have in his butt before Disney intervened? In an act of brand synergy, did Disney suggest to swap the item out for their beloved take on Pinocchio, themselves? Or was the character floated because, he too, would feel equally uncomfortable to have inserted in a bodily cavity? Or was offense taken because Deadpool accused Disney of being “cheap,” and the remark was that cutting? Last year, CEO Bob Iger announced the company would be cutting costs by $2 billion dollars in an effort to make its streaming service Disney+ more profitable–at the costs of thousands of jobs and the purging of several of its completed series to avoid paying royalties. Or maybe the joke was aimed at the company’s treatment of its theme park guests, or even its inability to get a new Star Wars movie off the ground? Whatever it was, we’re glad Reynolds and Levy agreed to take the high road with their reference to a little wooden puppet inside Deadpool’s bottom. Whatever it replaced must have been infinitely worse.
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