Deadpool 2 “won’t be bigger” says producer Simon Kinberg

It’s safe to say that with even with some mega blockbusters this year (Captain America: Civil War the obvious winner), perhaps the most surprising but delightful success was Deadpool. Years in the making, the film stole a huge chunk of change at the box office, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time with $760million worldwide.

But despite the success, director Tim Miller exited the sequel after “creative differences” with star Ryan Reynolds about just how big the follow-up should be: Reynolds and writers Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick wanted to keep the film modestly budgeted while Miller wanted to go “big” and triple the budget in-line with the bigger superhero franchises. Miller left, replaced by John Wick co-director David Leitch. Now producer Simon Kinberg has weighed in on the sequel, and told EW that they have had to “resist temptation” to make the film much bigger:

“The goal for us when we sat down and started talking about it was it needs to be as provocative and startling as the first film which means it can’t just be a continuation of the first film… It has tonally and stylistically be as fresh and original. That’s a big challenge especially because they had 10 years to gestate on the first movie and we don’t have that kind of time on the second movie. That’s the biggest mandate going into on the second film: to not make it bigger. We have to resist the temptation to make it bigger in scale and scope, which is normally what you do when you have a surprise hit movie. But actually stay true to the tenets of it’s the tone and the style and the humor that make it so special — it’s not the explosions and the special effects.”

While a big, expansive Deadpool sequel would still make a killing at the box office, it makes perfect sense creatively to keep those elements that made the first so successful and unique as Deadpool doesn’t need to scope and scale of say X-Men. Indeed many comic-book sequels over the years have fallen foul to the want to go “bigger” and they have had to rethink/reboot because of this. It seems Fox, like Warner Bros when they let Christopher Nolan make The Dark Knight, are trusting those in charge to deliver a worthy successor.

Deadpool 2 opens in February 2018.