Ryan Reynolds’ passion for getting Deadpool made—and made correctly—was so great, Yahoo Movies reports, he personally paid for its writers to be on set during filming. The revelation was made during the newest episode of AMC’s Geeking Out, where screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick said that, when Fox balked at footing the bill for them to be on the lot to help fine-tune scenes during production, it was actually Reynolds who dug into his own pocket to keep the band together:
“We were on set every day. Interestingly, Ryan wanted us there. We were on the project for six years. It was really a core creative team of us, Ryan, and the director Tim Miller. Fox, interestingly, wouldn’t pay for us to be on set. Ryan Reynolds paid out of his own money, out of his own pocket.”
That investment obviously paid off: Deadpool became one of the most successful films of the year, garnering both box office and critical success, and earning praise for having the kind of consistently realized vision that’s become all too rare in big-budget comic-book movies. Given all that, whenever Deadpool: Number Two (or whatever it ends up being called) goes into production, hopefully this time Reese and Wernick will be along for the ride on the studio’s dime.