Our new video series Backstory uses personal experience and insider's perspective to illuminate some of your favorite films and TV shows in different ways.
It was a pleasure to have Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick drop by the HitFix studio last week to talk about the long road to get their version of Deadpool onscreen, and I'd like to use that interview as a way of putting one of those persistent-but-untrue stereotypes about critics and entertainment reporters to bed.
People love to accuse critics of hating movies because they are bitter and frustrated screenwriters themselves. If that were true, then I should have hated Deadpool sight unseen because I pitched on that film as a writer almost fifteen years ago.
Wait… what? No one was interested in making a Deadpool film back in the year 2000, were they?
Actually, Marvel Studios was indeed trying to figure it out at that point, along with such disparate titles as Werewolf By Night and Ant-Man, and today's Backstory is all about that moment in time and the way it laid groundwork for what we know of now as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I'd like to also point out that the film Scott Swan and I pitched back in 2000 was nothing like the film that Reese and Wernick wrote, and they were absolutely the right guys for the job. Not only did they come up with an attitude that was perfect, but they wrote something we never would have come up with in a million years. How can I be bitter when the right guys not only got the job but did the job well?
I've actually been thinking quite a bit about fandom recently, and I've got some thoughts to share later today on the subject. For now, enjoy the new episode of Backstory.
Deadpool is in theaters everywhere now.