Is director Tim Miller hard to work with? Or is it just everyone else? It was no secret that Miller and producer James Cameron butted heads while making the recent flop ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’. Part of what landed Miller the job of directing this picture was his work on the box office smash ‘Deadpool’, but he did not return to helm the sequel, ‘Deadpool 2’, due to creative differences with star Ryan Reynolds.
Now, Miller has shed a little light on this situation. While discussing the failure of ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’, he revealed to The Hollywood Reporter:
“It became clear that Ryan wanted to be in control of the franchise. You can work that way as a director, quite successfully, but I can’t.”
In all fairness, ‘Deadpool’ only got made because of Reynolds’ tenacity. Reynolds played a heavily altered version of the character, a.k.a. Wade Wilson in 2009’s ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’. (The merc without a mouth?!) That movie was a dud and plans to spin Reynold’s Deadpool and Taylor Kitsch’s Gambit off into their own movies were torpedoed.
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But Reynolds never gave up. He paid to have a professional-quality, comic-accurate Deadpool costume made and began posting pictures and videos online. With the support of fans, Reynolds finally convinced Fox to make a ‘Deadpool’ movie, but the studio only relented on the condition that it be made for a lowly budget of $58 million. Reynolds and Miller delivered and the flick wound up grossing over $782 million at the global box office.
Of course, Fox ordered a sequel, but just as development began, it was announced that Miller would not return. ‘Deadpool 2’ made slightly more than the first at the box office but it cost $110 million to make, so it was less of a success. ‘Deadpool 2’, directed by David Leitch, wasn’t a flop and didn’t get bad reviews, but the consensus is that it wasn’t quite as good as the first.
And let’s not forget that despite what Miller says, Reynolds isn’t really in charge of the ‘Deadpool’ franchise, now that Disney owns Fox. It still hasn’t been announced what Disney will do with the brand. It doesn’t really fit their family-friendly model, yet there are plans underway for their Marvel Studios division to create new movies featuring the X-Men and related characters.
What do you think? Did ‘Deadpool 2’ suffer because Tim Miller didn’t return to direct? Or was it fine without him?
