Jay Maidment/20th Century Studios/Marvel
Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are on a massive promotional tour for "Deadpool & Wolverine" — but there was a chance things could have looked very different if one of Reynolds' more outlandish ideas for marketing was approved.
Reynolds revealed on an episode of "Hot Ones" that he had once planned to promote an intentionally bad-sounding movie called "Alpha Cop" as a ruse. The idea was that a handful of people would see it opening weekend, quickly realize that it's "Deadpool & Wolverine" after a few minutes of a fake bad movie played before cutting to the Marvel logo, and then word of mouth would power its box office the rest of its run.
But according to Reynolds' longtime writing partners Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the star's plan to playfully dupe the audience was actually devised back in 2017 when "Deadpool 2" was being shot.
"We wrote a Deadpool Christmas movie, and Ryan had this idea of what if we just didn't market it at all," Reese, along with Wernick, told Business Insider in a recent Zoom interview.
Fox/Marvel
"The dirty little secret was the three of us wrote it on spec, while on the set of 'Deadpool 2.' Fox didn't even know about it," Wernick said.
So while Reynolds was having fun filming Deadpool forming X-Force and battling Cable in the hit sequel, off-set, he, Reese, and Wernick were writing what they thought would end up being the third movie.
As Reynolds pointed out on "Hot Ones," marketing a fake movie would help with leaks of what was being cooked up for the next Deadpool movie. But the star also felt it could be financially rewarding for him and his writing partners as their backend, the money top creatives receive after the studio breaks even on a movie, would kick in much quicker without a massive marketing budget.
"Ryan's idea was, the $100-plus million that studios spend on marketing a big Marvel movie, fuck that, let's do 'Alpha Cop,'" Wernick said. "That was Ryan's genius plan of getting our backend to kick in immediately."
Reese explained the plan: "He would go out and publicize it, go on 'The Tonight Show' and show a clip from 'Alpha Cop,' but when people went to see it after five minutes, the Marvel logo would come up, and it would be the new Deadpool movie, 'Christmas Saves Deadpool.' That was the name of it."
There was even an "Alpha Cop" poster made. Wernick recently posted on X that the poster appears in Wade and Vanessa's apartment in "Deadpool 2."
"Christmas Saves Deadpool" was eventually put out to pasture once Fox was bought by Disney. And Reese confirms that trying to pull off the "Alpha Cop" ruse was brought up as a creative way to release "Deadpool & Wolverine" but was quickly declined.
"Marvel was basically like, 'We'll let you do a lot of things, not that though,'" Reese said.
Traditional marketing turned out to do the trick for "Deadpool & Wolverine." The movie took in $211 million domestically its opening weekend, passing the first "Deadpool" ($132 million) as the biggest opening ever for an R-rated movie. It will likely surpass $500 million worldwide before going into its second weekend in theaters.
"Deadpool & Wolverine" is in theaters now.
