Deadpool 2 is heading to cinemas next week, bringing back Ryan Reynolds as the cheeky-ass besuited mercenary. The movie runs to a tidy (for a superhero film) 119 mins, but it looks like we might be getting a longer cut when the film hits home ents.
Talking exclusively to Digital Spy, director David Leitch, who until now is best known for John Wick and Atomic Blonde, revealed that he hoped to be able to pull together some of his favourite scenes that had to be cut into an extended version.
When we asked about the improv process and how he honed down material in the edit, he explained:
"Yeah, there's a lot of material in dramatic scenes and in comedic scenes that you might want to cut, or you might want back in the movie. But I think, then, the movie starts to speak to you, and you're like, 'OK, this joke is really funny, but I don't want to subvert this emotional moment.' Or: 'This emotional moment is great, but we get the point, and the audience can make the leap, and they really want to just get to a joke.'
"So you're fine-tuning material that you've slaved over for a year. It's hard as a director sometimes to let things go, but you just have to be disciplined in the edit, and say, 'This is OK. This can go. It's better for the movie. The joke will work better, or the emotion will work better.'
"So yeah, there's plenty of jokes. Hopefully we'll make an extended version for home entertainment that people can enjoy."
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We're crossing our fingers that he's right, but even if a full extended version doesn't materialise, we can certainly expect a decent chunk of deleted scenes. Leitch says his favourite cut bit is a gag setup.
"You will see some of those in deleted scenes. There's a great scene in the mansion, in the kitchen, in the deleted scenes, that people will really enjoy. It actually sets up a joke that didn't need a setup, but it sets up the joke for the exterior of the Orphanage," he explained.
Hopefully we'll get more of Zazie Beetz as Domino too. When Digital Spy spoke with her, she recalled one of her favourite scenes that didn't make the cut.
"There's this one scene in it. I can't really talk too much about it, because a lot of it got reworked, and it's, in a way, incorporated in other ways in the film. It's one of the scenes I auditioned with, and it's just this sort of wonderful kind of back-and-forth between me and Ryan that everybody loved so much – but then parts of the script got reworked, and so it just didn't fit in anymore.
"But it's too bad that, you know, when some of your best work, because the story has changed, just doesn't fit. But they were thinking that they maybe wanted to incorporate it in some of the trailers, but I don't think they actually did.
"There's so much. There's so much that you shoot that also doesn't end up making it in the movie. You end up letting go. You're shooting for two hours, but really, you could make a 200-hour movie. That's part of the process."
200-hour extended cut anyone?
Deadpool 2 will be released on May 15 in the UK and May 18 in the US. Book tickets here.
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