Sometimes the bad guy isn’t the villain. pic.twitter.com/Mk86LQXlPa
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) March 19, 2015
Simulated gunfire and explosions are ringing out around the Terminal City Ironworks compound in east Vancouver today as production gets underway early on Deadpool, starring Vancouver’s own Ryan Reynolds (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) as The Merc With a Mouth and Morena Baccarin (Homeland, V) as the female lead. Filming is scheduled for Friday, Monday, Tuesday and maybe Wednesday (March 20, 23-25) according to the notice of filming.
Can you see Deadpool’s orange TO SET sign?
WHAM! is the fun production code for the big budget feature.
Deadpool is the character Reynolds played in Wolverine, an X-Men Origins movie starring Hugh Jackman, but that film wasn’t true to the amoral motormouth. In Marvel comic-book lore. Wade Winston Wilson is a wise-cracking gun-for-hire with cancer who partakes in military experiments to cure himself by replicating Wolverine’s mutant ability to heal quickly. The experiment succeeds except Wilson ends up terribly scarred. In Wolverine, Deadpool was surgically altered and mouthless. That won’t happen in Deadpool the movie.
Zombieland screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick worked with Ryan Reynolds in 2010 to correct the mistake and restore the character to a non-stop quipster who hides his ravaged face behind a red and black mask and breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience. Two years later, director Tim Miller and Ryan Reynolds made motion capture test footage based on the Deadpool script. The clip leaked online and went viral — over 4.5 million views to date — which led Fox to greenlight the movie.
[sz-youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CphFZGH5030″ /]
Morena Baccarin is no stranger to Vancouver either, after spending two seasons filming here as the lizard V Queen on the ABC alien invasion series.
Who does she play on Deadpool? The casting notice described her character as “smart, tough, beautiful but a little broken. Nothing has ever been easy for her and she’s developed a thick skin and cynical outlook. But she’s not a victim—she may not have a great life but she’s holding it together and does what she needs to get by. She’s got a great sense of humor but it leans heavily towards irony and sarcasm.” Does that sound like Vanessa Carlysle, aka Copycat?
Update:
Deadpool is expected to film for two months in and around Vancouver.