Marvel Planted Fake Leaks to Protect ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Cameos: There Were ‘Misdirections on the Internet’ and ‘In-Person to Protect the Secrecy’
The team behind “Deadpool & Wolverine” has not hidden the fact that the upcoming Marvel movie is home to some pretty huge superhero cameos that will delight comic book movie fans, but protecting those cameos meant leaking misinformation to fans. In an interview with GamesRadar+, executive producer Wendy Jacobson said “there may or may not have been some subterfuge and misdirections on the internet or in-person in order to protect the secrecy.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny any cameos in this film but I will say, in terms of characters that may or may not appear, it was always important to us that nothing in this movie feels like a gimmick,” Jacobson added. “Anyone showing up has a crucial story purpose or a beginning, middle and end as a character arc. It was definitely a collaborative process of seeing who fit in and who didn’t.”
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“Deadpool & Wolverine” director Shawn Levy told Entertainment Weekly earlier this month that there are lots of cameos in his movie, but he stressed that the team behind the Marvel tentpole “didn’t want any of the cameos or characters to be the story of the movie. But they are peppered in throughout.”
“There’s a lot of characters,” he added. “The internet is a delight of rumors about the multitude of character cameos that are in this movie. Some rumors are true, some are way off base.”
One potential cameo that continues to draw buzz on social media involved Taylor Swift, who some fans theorize will show up as either Lady Deadpool or the mutant Dazzler (a role she was allegedly circling in the “X-Men: Apocalypse” days). The “Deadpool & Wolverine” team have frequently shut down the rumor, and Reynolds recently told E! News: “I will say once and for all that the cameo thing with Taylor, because she’s our friend — that is not in this film.”
Marketing materials for “Deadpool & Wolverine” have already confirmed a handful of comic book characters who will be popping up in the movie, including Lady Deadpool (the actor behind the mask remains unknown at this time), Pyro (Aaron Stanford reprising his role from “X2: X-Men United” and “X-Men: The Last Stand”), X-23 (Dafne Keen reprising her role from “Logan”) and Sabretooth (Tyler Mane reprising his role from “X-Men”).
Stanford previously told Entertainment Weekly that returning as Pyro after an 18-year break made him “very happy” as “Deadpool & Wolverine” finally gave him the chance to wear a comic-accurate costume.
“In the original ‘X-Men’ films, Pyro gets really shortchanged in terms of a costume,” Stanford said. “In ‘X2,’ we start off with Pyro in Xavier’s School for Gifted Mutants. The SWAT team bursts in in the middle of the night and we have to flee. So for half the movie, I’m in my jammies. I never got the cool leather, tactical suit that all the X-Men wear. And in ‘X3,’ I was just dressed in an ensemble from Hot Topic, basically. So to have him be in a proper superhero costume that was actually taken from the comics themselves was very cool.”
Keen, meanwhile, told Entertainment Weekly that she rewatched “Logan” before reuniting with Hugh Jackman on the set of “Deadpool & Wolverine.” She added: “As soon as they said, ‘Rolling!’ I really felt like we were back doing Logan. It was like eight years hadn’t passed.”
“Deadpool and Wolverine” opens in theaters July 26 from Disney.
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