For a long time it seemed like the Deadpool movie could never happen. The character's first appearance in X-Men Origins: Wolverine completely mis-read Deadpool's appeal despite the seemingly perfect casing of Ryan Reynolds. When Reynolds made his DC with the Green Lantern movie for Warner Bros., it seemed unlikely that Deadpool would ever get back in track.

The canny decision to leak some test footage back in July of last year for a Deadpool movie treatment that relies heavily on CGI to embrace the character's Looney Tunes cartoonishness caused enough of a stir that Deadpool was suddenly alive again, with Reynolds still attached to star. Now we have evidence from the cast that the movie has entered into production, which means it is really, actually happening.

Reynolds and co-star Morena Baccarin both posted to their Twitter feeds from the set:



As you can see, we now know that Baccarin's character is called Vanessa, which pretty much guarantees she's playing the character known in the comics as Copycat, aka Vanessa Carlyle. Copycat is a shapeshifter who, like Deadpool, was created by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld in the pages of X-Force (originally masquerading as Domino). As Deadpool's ex from before he became the Merc with the Mouth, she's one of his major love interests. That said, she was dead for a long while, so her only recent significant appearance was in the Deadpool wedding issue that revealed she isn't actually dead.

We also now know that T.J. Miller is playing Weasel, Deadpool's sidekick and arms broker from the first Fabian Nicieza/Joe Madureira Deadpool series, and casting notices included a character who is very probably Blind Al ("late 60s to early 80s. Worldly, great sense of comedic timing, sarcastic, dry, funny"), so the movie is definitely harking back to the earliest Deadpool stories.

Deadpool is the directorial debut of animation and special effects artist Tim Miller. It opens in less than a year, on February 12, 2016.

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