Deadpool & Wolverine will be the first time the titular characters, previously owned by 20th Century Fox, will appear in a movie under the Marvel Studios banner. Company president Kevin Feige recently explained how he worked with Ryan Reynolds to blend the Merc with a Mouth into the MCU.

"We had nothing to do with the first two extremely successful Deadpool movies. Marvel Studios had nothing to do with those," Feige said on the Official Marvel Podcast. "So, in a way, we were playing on Ryan's turf. We were playing on somebody else's sandbox. The other way is that they were coming into our sandbox. We wanted to make it unique with the blending of those styles."

"It was really, really nice the way Shawn Levy, our director, and Ryan were able to come in and embrace the best of what Ryan had pioneered with Deadpool and what Hugh had pioneered on those early X-Men films and bringing them in a very irreverent way, which people are already starting to piece together based on the trailers and the presence of the Time Variance Authority into our sandbox," Feige continued.

Feige Worked on The First X-Men Movie

While Feige had no hand in the Deadpool films, he served as an associate producer on the first X-Men movie in 2000. So, when Hugh Jackman agreed to reprise his role as Wolverine, the project took on a new meaning for Feige. "When Hugh came on board, it became very emotional on a personal level for me, because my Marvel career absolutely started 26 years ago in pre-production on the first X-Men film," he explained.

"I was part of X-Men 1 and X-Men 2, and really the first three to a certain extent, before we had the honor and privilege of becoming Marvel Studios and developing the MCU," Feige continued. "I had not seen Hugh in a while and certainly had not thought about Wolverine or the X-Men as something that we could do ourselves for many, many years."

The inclusion of Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine carries more weight than sentimentality. It was Jackman who presented Reynolds with the idea of a team-up project just before the movie was put on hold. "I was sitting on a beach, not a care in the world, and for some reason, the thought came into my head: 'What do you want to do?' Then, literally, I thought, Deadpool-Wolverine. I want to do that movie.' That's what I want," Jackman explained. Reynolds loved the proposal. He called Feige to pitch the idea and the rest is history.

Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters worldwide on July 26, 2024.