A cautionary tale and here’s why the offer story is dangerous (and not something we love, but something we recognize is part of the game these days). Back in the day we were the first to report that Robert Rodriguez had been offered “Deadpool,” the “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” spin-off starring Ryan Reynolds.
And he was offered the film, but the director never became formally (or informally) attached to the project, but of course when Swedish director Adam Berg came into the picture, everyone assumed Rodriguez had left the project. Problem was it wasn’t something he could leave because it was never a film he could seriously entertain due to his busy schedule.
“I was working with Fox already on ‘Predators‘ and I asked what other movies they had coming up,” he explained to MTV. “It was ‘Planet of the Apes‘ and other stuff. They said I might want to see ‘Deadpool.’ So I said, ‘Sure, send it to me.’ Almost just out of curiosity. And if I really, really wanted to do it, maybe I could figure out a way to do it. But that wasn’t really going to happen. I just couldn’t fit it in with other projects.”
“People send you scripts all the time to read,” he added. “They’ll send the same script out to 20 different directors, but for some reason they write about it when I’m reading something. I’m like, ‘Well, I was just reading it!’
“It’s just a bizarre world these days with the Internet and websites needing to get traffic, they’ll write a story about anything,” he said, making us feel rather guilty (though if you’ve read our original piece, it’s couched well and we said we thought he would eventually pass on it). “I didn’t tell anyone I was reading it, but I guess it comes through the studio and someone finds out and it becomes a big deal. Then you almost feel pressure if I say I’m not doing it, I don’t want anything bad reflected on the project.”
“I just read it,” he continued. “It’s going to be a cool movie. I don’t want people to think it’s going to stink! Not at all. It’s a great script and action-packed and it’s a great character. But it’s like, ‘He turned it down! He dropped out!’ Well, I was never in the project!” Point well taken. We won’t bother saying hate the game, not the player cause we’re unfortunately complicit here, sigh…
Since all this of course, discussions with Adam Berg never coalesced and now visual effects filmmaker Tim Miller is set to direct the project. But is “Deadpool” ever coming to the screen? Even Reynolds recently hasn’t sounded that confident that he’ll remain attached to the project for that much longer. “Zombieland” writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick penned the “Deadpool” script.
Meanwhile, Rodriguez has “Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World” hitting theaters this summer on August 19. We suspect sometime after that, Rodriguez will formally announce plans to go forward with “Sin City 2” which was his informal idea as of October 2010. And he definitely hints that he wants to make his own material.
“It’s harder to do stuff that pre-exists,” he said. “The studios own it. It’s work for hire. A lot of the stuff I do, I own. I still read those scripts, but at the end of the day, I think I should just create my own.” We agree.