Deadpool & Wolverine, directed by Shawn Levy, is the second-highest grossing movie of 2024 and the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. But launching the Deadpool franchise apparently doesn't pay. Though director Tim Miller feels "uniquely fortunate" to be part of the series' history and "nothing but pride" for contributing to it, he also admitted at the CCXP film festival that he does wish his "director deals had a piece of the merchandising so that I could get some money from all of that."
As it turns out, Miller only "got $225,000" to direct the first film in the series. "I know it sounds like a lot of money, but for two years of work, that's not a ton of money," he said (via Collider). "Not that I'm not grateful, I'm fucking grateful, that's the way it is because you're supposed to when you're a first-time director. My agent said 'Dude, you make more on an episode of The Walking Dead!'"
Miller isn't doing too bad for himself today—he's created multiple TV shows (including Love, Death & Robots) and serves as an executive producer on the Sonic The Hedgehog film franchise. (You know he's gotta be making bank on that one.) But it is remarkable to think he didn't make a lot of money off of a moneymaker like Deadpool, particularly when his work was instrumental in getting the film off the ground. Famously, Miller and Ryan Reynolds shot test footage for a potential Deadpool movie in 2012 that was shelved by Fox. That footage was leaked years later (possibly, probably by Reynolds himself), and online excitement around it helped get the first Deadpool a greenlight.
"When Fox came to me they said the film has to be done for a budget, and that budget was not anywhere near the size of the bigger comic book films," Miller said in a Q&A with fxguide in 2016. "That was actually good, for two reasons. One, there would be less oversight and R-rated is the way to do Deadpool. Two, because they’d never let me do it if it was $100m since I’m a first-time director. I was happy there were limitations."
It's too bad those budgetary limitations included Miller's own salary! Nevertheless, Miller said at CCXP, "I don't want to sound like I wasn't grateful because… I was 50 when I got a chance to direct Deadpool, and I really thought I wasn't going to get a chance to direct a movie even though I'd wanted to my whole life." All's well that ends well.
