Ryan Reynolds Talks About Deadpool: "It's Just Based In So Much Emotional Filth"

In the last couple of months, Ryan Reynolds has been attached to a huge series of films as both actor and producer. The effect of all that is two-fold: his management and reps are obviously determined to make him huge, for one. And, more important to some fans, we've wondered if all the other work meant that his Deadpool film at Fox was going to fall between the cracks.

Now Reynolds is talking about Deadpool, and making it seem very much alive and well, if still working its way through the development process.

Over the past year or so I've heard a lot about Deadpool; enough that despite the relationship to the execrable Wolverine film and general tentpole mindset at Fox, I've been pretty intrigued.

By way of describing the film as quite different from most superhero movies, Reynolds nicely articulates some of the stuff that has been floating around about the movie in an interview with the LA Times:

It's a nasty piece of work. It's just based in so much emotional filth, completely. It's like 'Barfly' if it were a superhero movie. It sort of treads into the world of an emotionally damaged person.  I always say that Deadpool is a guy in a highly militarized shame spiral.... It's so different than the superhero movies to date, it departs so far from that.

The script is by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who came on after Fox had done one round of writer searching and then put things on pause when Reynolds signed to do Green Lantern with Warner Bros. It's sounding like they've gone a lot farther here than they did with the script for Zombieland.

Though Reynolds acknowledges that the comics are inconsistent when it comes to many aspects of Deadpool, he says it's the character's 'moral flexibility' that makes him interesting.

...it's a lot like going to prison for the first day...You got to walk up and hit the biggest guy you see to establish a bit of cred. With Deadpool, early on you have to establish that moral flexibility. There's a gamble to it — you're going to lose a few people right at the beginning but you take the gamble and know that eventually you're going to win them back.

And some aspects of the comics will absolutely make it to the film, as the LAT summarizes:

The new film won't be beholden to the events depicted in "Wolverine" in any way, Reynolds said, and, yes, fans can expect the character to break the fourth wall and address the audience at times like some sort of deranged Ferris Bueller armed with katana swords.