Tim Miller Speaks Out Against Those ‘Deadpool 2’ Production Rumors
One of the stranger stories to end the year was the sudden departure of director Tim Miller from Deadpool 2, the sequel to 2016’s biggest breakout hit. Given the original film’s agonizing production history, it seemed like shooting a sequel would be a walk in the woods; instead, Miller’s decision to walk away from the project caught everyone by surprise, and rumors have swirled about creative differences ever since. Thankfully, Miller himself recently spoke at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects (via iO9) and put some of these rumors to bed.
Let’s start with what we thought we knew. Back in October, we wrote about the rumors that the tension between Miller and star Ryan Reynolds had to do with the scale of the project. At the time, The Wrap quoted an anonymous source close to the project as saying, “There were two totally different movies on the table, and one of them just wasn’t Deadpool.” To hear Miller tell it, though, he never had a larger film in mind.
I didn’t want to make some stylized movie that was three times the budget, and if you read the internet — and who cares, really — but for those of you who do, I wanted to make the same kind of movie that we made before, because I think that’s the right kind of movie to make for the character. So, don’t believe what you read on the Internet.
So it wasn’t about the size and spectacle of the movie. What about the casting? Another rumor about Miller’s departure was that he really wanted Kyle Chandler for the role of Cable, Deadpool’s on-again, off-again mentor and friend. Again, Miller says no.
Kyle Chandler was not going to be Cable. All these things that you read kinda kills me, even when people go, “The movie was really hard to make.” The movie was a joy to make. I think you see it on screen, we all had such a good time. We had a few arguments in post, but nothing more than usual. The crew was so great, everybody was going to come back, and we were going to have such a good time. The idea that it was a difficult movie, it wasn’t — it was a joy, and it was the best experience of my life.
In the interview, Miller goes on to praise the studio, the new director, and pretty much everyone else involved in Deadpool 2. So. Miller left the film even though everything was great and he and Reynolds had zero creative differences? Huh. Since Miller is still working on films for 20th Century Fox — as our article notes, his next project is set to be a blockbuster adaptation of the popular science fiction novel Influx — this could just be a situation where Miller is playing the good soldier and refusing to air his real grievances with Reynolds or the rest of the production team. Buy Miller a round of shots and I’ll bet you get a whole different story.
Blockbuster or no, Deadpool 2 is still set to hit theaters some time in 2018. Fingers crossed that the production doesn’t encounter any more setbacks along the way.