Ryan Reynolds was writing ‘Deadpool’ while he was shooting ‘Green Lantern’

However, the project that came about in large part because of the success of The Proposal quickly poured cold water on that. Reynolds auditioned for the title role in Green Lantern — another comic book adaptation, this time from DC Comics, Marvel’s archrival — not really expecting to be offered the part. When he was, he says, “I quickly called the executive I knew at Fox who had Deadpool and I said, ‘Look, I am standing at the altar right now, and I’m about to say “I do” to someone else. I will walk away from this if you even think that you can make a Deadpool movie with me.’ And he said, ‘Unfortunately, no, I don’t think that that’s gonna happen.’ So I went off and did Green Lantern.”

He continues, “The weird plot twist was, somehow, some way, Deadpool got reinvigorated at Fox while [Green Lantern] was happening. … What a lot of people don’t know is [writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick] flew to New Orleans and, while I was shooting Green Lantern, we were actually all together writing Deadpool.” He adds with a laugh, “We were breaking the story of the original Deadpool movie in a house that was being paid for by Green Lantern’s dime.” All the while, Reynolds worried that he might never be allowed to play Deadpool, even if the film moved forward, now that he had hitched his wagon to Green Lantern. “I thought, ‘If Green Lantern is a huge hit, they’re never gonna accept me as both, and if Green Lantern is a huge failure — which it ended up being — they’re never going to hire me.’ “