If screenwriters and have a superpower, it’s not sweating rejection. When scores of stars turned down an offer to cameo in , the studio was ready to give up, but Wernick insisted on a Hail Mary, and they asked star Woody Harrelson to dive into his rolodex for one more name. Two days later, Bill Murray was on set playing a zombie-fied version of himself in the movie’s most memorable sequence.
And as has been well documented, the duo — along with star Ryan Reynolds and director Tim Miller — overcame six years of hearing the word “no” to make that movie a genre-redefining reality. What is less known is that Reese and Wernick themselves were actually rebuffed when they initially pitched their take to Reynolds and 20 Century Fox in the fall of 2009. The pair, hot off the success of , were tired of superhero origin stories, so their pitch began with Wade Wilson already into his career and life as Deadpool.
“Ryan passed. Ryan essentially said, ‘Great but you know what? I don’t think you’re the guys to write this,'” Wernick tells . They weren’t ready to give up.
Their WME agent Phil D’Amecourt sent Reynolds a script Reese and Wernick wrote for an dead HBO pilot they penned for Todd Haynes, described as “a dark drama about a voyeur.” Reynolds liked the script, and invited them to pitch again — this time no execs. Over a two-hour lunch at Chateau Marmont, the trio hashed out a version of what would become the first , with Reynolds soon firing off an impa.
