Deadpool

Deadpool is a 2016 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is the eighth installment in the X-Men film series. The film is directed by Tim Miller, with a screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and stars Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T. J. Miller, Gina Carano, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapičić, and Leslie Uggams. The film follows Wade Wilson who, after being subjected to an experiment that leaves him with new abilities, hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.

In February 2004, development for the film began with New Line Cinema. However, in March 2005, New Line Cinema put the film in turnaround and 20th Century Fox became interested. In May 2009, 20th Century Fox lent the film to writers, and in April 2011, Miller was hired to direct. Principal photography commenced in Vancouver, Canada, in March 2015 and ended in May.

Deadpool premiered in Paris on February 8, 2016, and was released on February 12, 2016 in North America in IMAX, DLP, D-Box and premium large formats. The film had the highest-grossing opening weekend for an R-rated film in North America, and broke numerous other box office records, while receiving generally positive reviews, with critics praising Reynolds' performance, the humor, and the action sequences, but criticizing the plot as formulaic. A sequel has been greenlit.

Plot
Wade Wilson is a mercenary who spends his time in New York City protecting teenage girls from would-be stalkers. He meets escort Vanessa Carlysle at a local bar and they become romantically attached for nearly a year. He proposes to her one night, but then he suddenly collapses. Wade is diagnosed with terminal cancer and though Vanessa remains by his side, he fears losing her.

One night, at the bar that he met Vanessa, he is approached by a recruiter from a secret program. He is offered an experimental cure for his cancer, but he rebuffs the man and leaves. Desperate to live, he reconsiders and leaves Vanessa in the middle of the night to undergo the procedure. He is injected with a special serum by Francis Freeman and tortured for days by Angel Dust in order to trigger a mutation. After weeks of no success, Wade is strapped into an airtight chamber after insulting Francis. The drop in oxygen triggers a healing factor that takes his cancer "as far as it can go", severely disfiguring his face and skin in the process, but effectively rendering him immortal. He escapes from the chamber by blowing it up and attempts to kill Francis, only stopping when he claims he can cure Wade's disfigurement. He is then impaled by rebar and left for dead in the destruction of the lab.

Although he tracks Vanessa down, he cannot come to terms with his complexion, and he keeps himself away from her. Wade moves into the home of an elderly blind woman named Al, and with the advice of his best friend Weasel, he becomes a masked vigilante named "Deadpool", and begins hunting down Francis and dismantling his organization.

Following a string of leads from various syndicates, Deadpool attacks a convoy of cars on an expressway before getting his hands on Francis, demanding a cure to his disfigurement. The confrontation is suddenly interrupted by two X-Men, Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, who want him to join the team. Their intervention enables Francis to run off, and when Colossus handcuffs himself to Deadpool on their way back to the X-Mansion, Deadpool cuts off his own hand and escapes back to his home with Blind Al. His hand regenerates overnight.

The next night, Weasel convinces Deadpool to go back to Vanessa, but when they arrive at the strip club she works at, Deadpool discovers that she has been kidnapped, and Francis and Angel Dust tell him to meet up with them on a decommissioned aircraft carrier at a scrapyard.

Deadpool convinces Colossus and Negasonic to help him, and the trio take a cab to the scrapyard, where Colossus and Negasonic have a grueling battle with Angel Dust while Deadpool slashes through an army of goons on his way toward Francis. Deadpool and Francis then engage in bloody hand-to-hand combat before Negasonic uses her power to destroy the aircraft carrier. In the end, Deadpool gains the upper hand in the fight and Francis admits that there is no cure for Wade's disfigurement. Although Colossus urges Deadpool to spare Francis and be a true hero, he shoots Francis in the head, finally killing him and avenging himself. Deadpool removes his mask and shows Vanessa his new face. Though she is angry that he left her, she accepts him and they reconcile by kissing.

In a post-credits scene, Deadpool begins to re-enact the post-credit scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, before interrupting himself saying they couldn't afford a more spectacular teaser featuring "Sam Jackson with an eyepatch". After a brief cutaway, he then returns to announce that there will be a sequel involving Cable, suggesting that it could be played by Mel Gibson, Dolph Lundgren or Keira Knightley. He also warns the audience not to leave their trash in the theater, and ends the film with "chikah-chi-kaaah".

Cast

 * Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson / Deadpool:
 * A mercenary who was subjected to an experimental regenerative mutation to cure his cancer, which gives him accelerated healing superpowers. This however comes with the cost of severely bad scarring, and slight insanity. Reynolds said that this version of Deadpool would be more "authentic" than the one that appeared in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and would be more similar to the comic book character.


 * Morena Baccarin as Vanessa Carlysle: Wade's girlfriend.
 * Ed Skrein as Francis / Ajax:
 * A mutant with enhanced strength and an inability to feel pain, who is a weapons expert. He is also member of the Weapon X program that was responsible for the experiment for which Wade volunteered.


 * T.J. Miller as Weasel: Wade's best friend who regularly helps him carry out his activities.
 * Gina Carano as Angel Dust: A mutant in alliance with Ajax, who possesses superhuman levels of strength and speed.
 * Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead: A teenage X-Men trainee mutant, who possesses powers to detonate atomic bursts from her body.
 * Stefan Kapičić as Colossus:
 * A mutant member of the X-Men, with the ability to transform his entire body into organic steel, and possesses super-strength while in that form. The role was originally offered to Daniel Cudmore, who had played the character in X2, X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past, but he declined. Instead, Colossus became a performance by several actors: Kapičić provided the voice,  Andre Tricoteux performed the motion-capture performance, motion capture supervisor Greg LaSalle was used for the facial performance and a variety of other actors were used for stunts and face scanning.


 * Leslie Uggams as Blind Al: An elderly blind woman and Deadpool's roommate.
 * Jed Rees as The Recruiter: The Weapon X recruiter that enlists Wade into the program in hopes to cure his cancer.

Karan Soni portrays Dopinder, a taxi driver. X-Men co-creator Stan Lee has a cameo appearance as a strip club MC. Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld also has a cameo appearance as a man living in the apartment where Wade Wilson confronts a stalker. Deadpool series regular Bob makes a brief cameo, portrayed by Rob Hayter.

Development
Deadpool was in development hell for more than 10 years. In May 2000, Artisan Entertainment announced a deal with Marvel Entertainment to coproduce, finance and distribute a film based on Deadpool. In February 2004, New Line Cinema attempted to produce a Deadpool film with writer/director David S. Goyer working on the spin-off and actor Ryan Reynolds in the title role; Reynolds himself became interested in the character after finding out that in Cable & Deadpool, Deadpool refers to his own scarred appearance as "Ryan Reynolds crossed with a Shar-Pei".

By August, Goyer lost interest in favor of other projects. In March 2005, after New Line put Deadpool in turnaround, 20th Century Fox became interested in moving forward on production for the project.

Fox considered a Deadpool spin-off early in the development of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which had Reynolds cast in the role, and after the opening weekend success of that film announced that it was lending Deadpool out to writers, with Lauren Shuler Donner acting as a producer. Donner wanted the film to reboot the character of Deadpool, ignoring the version in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and including attributes that the character has in the comics, such as breaking the fourth wall. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were hired to write the script in January 2010, and Robert Rodriguez was sent an early draft of the screenplay that June. After negotiations with Rodriguez fell through, Adam Berg emerged as a top contender to direct. The script leaked in the February of 2010 and garnered a positive reaction by the fans, prompting Fox to grant a small budget for test footage. In April 2011, visual effects specialist Tim Miller was hired as director, making the film his directorial debut.

In July 2014, the visual effects test footage created for the film in 2012 and starring Reynolds through motion capture, was leaked online. Blur Studio, the company that created the test footage, subsequently released it officially. In September 2014, Fox gave the film a release date of February 12, 2016. The next month, producer Simon Kinberg said that the film would be part of the shared cinematic universe with the other X-Men films. Marvel characters Cannonball and Garrison Kane were removed from subsequent rewrites of the script, with the latter specifically being omitted due to budgetary concerns over the required CGI for his cybernetic arms, and the former being omitted due to concerns he would have been a "stupid hick character". Wyre was initially going to appear as an additional villain, but was also cut, while plans to have the Marvel superhero Cable appear were halted when it was decided that he would work better in a potential sequel.

Reynolds "100 percent" attributed Fox's greenlighting of the film to the test footage leak, stating, after being asked who had leaked it, "I would have, if I had known it would have caused that!...Now, we get to make the movie. We don’t get to make it with the budget of most superhero movies, but we get to make it the way we want to make it". Despite this, he also noted that the film's budget was considerably lower than what the standard for a superhero movie is and writer Rhett Reese admitted that about $7 million was deducted from the budget ostensibly last-minute, forcing rewrites.

Casting
In December 2014, Reynolds was confirmed to reprise his role as Wade Wilson / Deadpool. In January 2015, T. J. Miller and Ed Skrein were in talks to appear in the film. In February 2015, Gina Carano was cast as Angel Dust, and Miller and Morena Baccarin were cast in unspecified roles. Taylor Schilling, Crystal Reed, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Sarah Greene, and Jessica De Gouw were also considered for Baccarin's role. In March, Miller's role was revealed to be Weasel, while Baccarin's was revealed to be Vanessa Carlysle. Later that month, Brianna Hildebrand was cast as Negasonic Teenage Warhead. In April, Skrein revealed his role as Ajax. In July, Leslie Uggams confirmed she will be portraying Blind Al. In August, Tim Miller revealed that Jed Rees will portray The Recruiter. Daniel Cudmore was approached to reprise his role as Colossus from the previous X-Men films, but declined when he learned that he was not being asked to voice the character as well. Instead, Stefan Kapičić will voice Colossus, with Andre Tricoteux providing the motion capture performance.

Filming
Principal photography commenced on March 23, 2015, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and ended on May 29, 2015. Re-shoots began in November.

Music
Tom Holkenborg, better known as Junkie XL, confirmed on his own Twitter account that he was scoring the soundtrack for the movie. The soundtrack album was released digitally on February 12, 2016, featuring music composed by Holkenborg and music by other artists. Physical copies of the soundtrack will be available on March 4, 2016 through Milan Records.

The soundtrack features the song "Deadpool Rap" by YouTube personalities "TeamHeadKick", which was originally inspired by the Deadpool video game released in 2013; the version on the film soundtrack features the lyrics updated to reference the events of the film instead of elements of the game.

Release
Deadpool made its world premiere at the Grand Rex in Paris on February 8, 2016. Deadpool was released on February 10, 2016 in the United Kingdom and February 12, 2016 in North America. The film was released in various formats such as IMAX, DLP, premium large formats and D-Box. However, it was denied a theatrical release in China and Uzbekistan due to its content, for violence, nudity and graphic language. In India, it received an A certificate by the Central Board of Film Certification with some cuts. It opened Tuesday, February 9, in Hong Kong, and in 7 additional markets on Wednesday, February 10 including the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Taiwan, the Philippines, Belgium and Singapore. 39 other markets, including Australia, Argentina and Brazil, opened on Thursday, February 11 with 23 more markets to bow on Friday, February 12, including the United States and Canada and India among other markets. South Korea, Italy, Spain and Japan are yet to open in the coming weekends.

Many of the friends rejected (and banned) from watching Deadpool, including China. These include Angelica Muk, Huang Wen, Melissa Han, Lim Qing Yi, Malcolm Lim, Dickson Ong and Claudia Soo.

Marketing
In July 2015, director Miller and several cast members attended the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con to present the trailer of the film, which received a standing ovation from attendees who requested that it be played again. Graeme McMillan of The Hollywood Reporter opined that Deadpool "looks like the first movie that talks to the fan audience in their own language", and praised the meta humor of the trailer, while Business Insider's Joshua Rivera gave the trailer a positive review for being "faithful to the source material", as well as for its humor and action.

In December 2015, Fox launched a viral marketing campaign titled "The 12 days of Deadpool", which consisted of one website posting new info about the film each day, with the culmination of a new trailer released on Christmas Day. The general marketing campaign for the film has garnered a positive reaction in the media; two particular items that were noted as effective was a campaign to feign Deadpool as a Valentine's Day romance film, and a billboard only containing the emoji "💀💩L" which journalists called "dumb, yet hilarious".

On January 19, 2016, two screenings of supposedly yet unseen footage in New York and Los Angeles turned out to be surprise screenings of the entire film; Screen Rant noted that fan reactions to the film were "overwhelmingly positive".

Box office
, Deadpool has grossed $135.1 million in North America and $125.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $260.2 million. It had a worldwide opening of $260.2 million from 62 markets which is the biggest of 2016, the second biggest fot an R-rated film (behind Fifty Shades of Grey), and the third biggest for Fox, only behind Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith ($303.9 million) and X-Men: Days of Future Past ($262.9 million). It also recorded the biggest IMAX 2D worldwide opening of all time with $28 million, eclipsing The Dark Knight Rises ($23.8 million).

North America
In the United States and Canada, pre-release tracking originally suggested the film would open to $55–65 million from 3,557 theaters in its opening weekend, and up to $75 million over the four-day Presidents' Day weekend, outstripping the projections for fellow newcomers Zoolander No. 2 and How to Be Single. Tracking also showed that the film was strong for both males and females. However, once the film approached its opening day, estimates rose to as high as $100+ million three day opening, and going as high as a $120 million for the four-day opening. However, Fox is being conservative projecting a three day opening between other superhero movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy ($94.3 million) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($95 million). The film has the added benefit of playing across 374 IMAX screens and 475 premium large format screens. It made $12.7 million from its Thursday night previews from 2,975 theaters, setting records for the biggest R-rated and February previews, beating The Hangover Part II ($10.4 million) and Fifty Shades of Grey ($8.6 million), respectively. Of that $2.3 million came from IMAX showings, for a per screen average of $6,200, which is the sixth biggest IMAX preview ever. This broke the record for the biggest February IMAX preview and the biggest R-rated IMAX preview. Buoyed by good word of mouth, it exceeding expectations on its opening day earning $47.2 million, breaking the records for the biggest R-rated opening day and the biggest February opening day. It also became the biggest R-rated single day, the 21st biggest opening day, the 39th biggest single day, and the second-biggest day ever for a 20th Century Fox film behind the $50 million Thursday debut of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. 14% of its Friday gross came from PLF screen which grossed $6.4 million of which Cinemark XD made $1.6 million of that figure. Earning an estimated $135 million in its opening weekend, it broke the record for the biggest R-rated opening of all time, the biggest February opening, the biggest opening for Fox, and the biggest opening of Reynolds' career. PLF screens represented 13% or $17.6 million of that gross from 465 screens, a new record. Futhermore, it scored the second biggest opening ever for the first installment of a superhero property behind Disney/Marvel's The Avengers ($207.4 million), the third biggest pre-summer season (which starts in May) opening, behind The Hunger Games ($152.5 million) and Furious 7 ($147.2 million), and the seventh-biggest comic book adpatations opening. It became the thirty-sixth film to open above $100 million and is the first R-rated film to do so, Its opening weekend alone made it the biggest R-rated comic book superhero movie, the biggest R-rated costumed superhero comic book movie and the second biggest R-rated comic book adaptation (behind 300).

Outside North America
Outside North America, Deadpool will be released in a total of 80 countries. It began its international rollout on February 10, with previews on Tuesday night where it earned $12 million from 7 markets. The Hollywood Reporter called it "no small feat" considering it's the first Marvel superhero film to be rated R. On its opening day – which varies among different countries – it had the biggest Fox opening day ever for a 15-rated movie, the 5th highest opening day for a Marvel film and the biggest IMAX Wednesday opening ever (behind Spectre) in the United Kingdom and Ireland ($3.4 million), the biggest February opening of all time in Australia ($2.1 million). the biggest Fox opening day ever and the biggest IMAX opening of all time in Taiwan with $1.4 million ($1.7 million including previews), Fox's biggest Chinese New Year single day ever in Hong Kong ($650,000), the biggest opening day ever for an R-rated film in the Philippines ($357,000), the biggest superhero opening day ever in Belgium ($270,000), and Fox's biggest opening day ever for an M18 rated film in Singapore ($205,000). Through Sunday, February 14, it earned an opening-weekend total of $125.1 million from 61 countries (which is 80% of its total international marketplace) where it opened at No. 1 in 59 of them with the exceptions of Poland and Malaysia (behind The Mermaid). It had the biggest opening for the studio in 13 markets including Australia, Taiwan, Brazil, Hong Kong and Malaysia, the biggest R-rated (or equivalent) opening weekend of all time in 11 markets and the biggest February opening in the United Kingdom and Ireland and Australia. IMAX comprised $7.9 million of the weekend's gross from 232 IMAX screens, with records set for their biggest February and R-rated openings in numerous markets including Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and the U.K.

The biggest opener outside of the United States was witnessed in the UK, Ireland and Malta, where it earned $20.1 million in its opening weekend, which is the biggest debut ever for a film released in February. In Russia, it scored the biggest opening weekend of all time with $12.3 million on an estimated 1,119 screens, breaking the previous record held by Star Wars: The Force Awakens two months prior. International tallies of more than $5 million were witnessed in Australia ($10.1 million), France ($8.67 million), Taiwan ($8.2 million), Germany ($7 million) and Brazil ($5.85 million).

Critical response
Deadpool has received positive reviews from critics and audiences. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 84%, based on 196 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Fast, funny, and gleefully profane, the fourth-wall-busting Deadpool subverts the superhero film formula with wildly entertaining – and decidedly non-family-friendly – results." Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". On CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said the film is "party time for action junkies" and Reynolds may have found the role that defines his career. In his review for TheWrap, Alonso Duralde called Deadpool "a funny, bloody comedy [that] is the Marvel Universe's biggest breath of fresh air since Guardians of the Galaxy", praising it, among other things, for its self-aware wit. Christy Lemire also praised the film for being "beyond meta" and "up its ass and back out its own mouth again".

Richard Roeper gave the film 2.5 out 4 stars, praising Reynolds' performance but saying the film gets bogged down by its origin story, and all too often becomes like the films it spoofs. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times found the movie lacking, noting that protagonist "is not an individual who wears particularly well" and that jokes "eventually get wearing, but Reynolds is quite good at [them]". He also commended Baccarin on her performance but ultimately notes that the movie is "rife with standard-issue elements."

Sequel
In September 2015, Kinberg commented on the possibility of a sequel for Deadpool: "we were talking about the sequel while we were making the movie just because when you make a film like this that’s from a serialized source material, you hope that it’s the first of many". By the release of Deadpool, Fox had already greenlit the sequel, with Reese and Wernick returning to write, and Miller being looked at to return as director.