Ryan Reynolds was willing to self-fund this passion project. 

Indeed, the Deadpool actor recently opened up about how he managed to get the movie off the ground prior to its original release in 2016, noting it had been ten years in the making. 

“No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success,” Ryan shared to the New York Times in an interview published July 15. “I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen. They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.”

And while the 47-year-old—who shares kids James, 9, Inez, 7, Betty, 4, and a fourth baby born in February 2023 with Blake Lively—had to scrounge to make his vision successful, he managed to learn a lot from the experience. 

“I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money,” he added. “It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie. I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time. I remembered wanting to feel that more—not just on Deadpool but on anything.”

Given the success of Deadpool, its 2018 sequel, and now the hype for its upcoming spin-off Deadpool and Wolverine—the first of the franchise’s films to be under the Marvel umbrella—it’s proven that Ryan’s sacrifices were certainly worth it. Of course, the Proposal star noted that starring alongside Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine again was “all” he wanted. 

“I’ve waited forever to do a movie with this guy,” Ryan gushed. “And I think he’s waited a long time to do something like this with me, so there are scenes where it’s pretty hard to distinguish between Wade Wilson talking to Logan and Ryan talking to Hugh. I love that, I get goose bumps even just talking about it."