Smells Like ‘10s Spirit: How The Existence of ‘Deadpool’ Exemplifies the Power of Fan Culture

“Smells Like ’10s Spirit” takes a look at the decade in movies through the lens of success stories only made possible by unique trends that emerged. This series explores ten films – one from each year of the 2010s – and a single social, economic or cultural factor that can explain why it made an impact or lingers in the collective memory. Each piece examines a single film that tells the larger story of the tectonic forces reshaping the entertainment landscape as we know it. In this edition: Tim Miller’s Deadpool, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Cinema, the world’s costliest art form, has commerce built into the very DNA of the medium. As such, it tends to be among the most reactive and responsive to audience needs. At the studio level, films need to turn a profit, or they endanger the health of the entire business.

For nearly a century, supply and demand for Hollywood products looked more like an art than a science. Some clever men (yes, unfortunately, it was virtually always men) in a company boardroom took their best educated guesses at what moviegoers wanted to see and then steered their ship where the wind blew. But the 2010s have introduced a new dynamic into their decision-making as the voices of fans have become amplified and quantifiable. The 2016 film Deadpool owes its very existence to the assertion of their might.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Deadpool star and producer Ryan Reynolds, the key creative force pushing to get the film made for over a decade, gave the fans credit for the film’s greenlight at San Diego Comic-Con 2015. “You guys, the internet, fans, you guys made the studio do this,” he told a rapt crowd in the notorious Hall H. “You bent their arms behind their backs, twisted their frigging necks, and here we are.”

Reynolds was not short of powerful allies, either; according to Deadpool co-screenwriter Rhett Reese, James Cameron and David Fincher both went to top studio brass at Fox to encourage them to put the script into production. Perhaps they helped grease the wheels, but it’s notable that fans accomplished what the director of the-then two highest grossing movies of all time could not. Through a unique set of circumstances both personal and cultural, some years in the making, the “Merc with a Mouth” finally got his moment of cinematic glory.

To understand just how this movie came to be, we have to go all the way back to 2005, when Christopher Nolan was just making his first Batman feature and Ryan Reynolds was best known for his supporting role in Blade Trinity. That film’s writer/director, David S. Goyer, along with Marvel Studios’ founder Avi Arad, tried to develop it as part of a 2000 deal struck with Artisan Entertainment to turn Marvel characters into films. But once Fox took charge of the Deadpool project, Reynolds said it turned into “a roller-coaster ride of stagnation for everyone” and likened it frequently to “the worst relationship I’ve ever been in: on-again, off-again.”

Things took a turn whenever Fox made its plans to introduce Deadpool, along with a slew of other X-Men, in 2009’s ill-fated X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The film came together in the midst of the 2007 writers’ strike, which led Reynolds to write his own dialogue for the character. According to a profile of the actor in GQ, all he had to go on were stage directions: “Deadpool shows up, talks really fast, and makes a lot of jokes.” While the character’s sardonic wit came through in the portrayal, little else did according to Reynolds’ wishes. But the studio gave him no choice: he could either accept a Deadpool that deviated wildly from canon or relinquish the role to another actor altogether. Reynolds’ instincts were proven correct when the film leaked prior to release, and the studio chief called him in from vacation to reshoot the disastrously received ending. This would merely be the first of many times that fans intervened to get the Deadpool they wanted.

In spite of X-Men Origins: Wolverine‘s disappointing reception and performance, the film’s devoted creative team kept plowing forward. Rhett Reese, along with Paul Wernick, penned a draft of the script in 2010 even as Reynolds assumed another comic book persona, Green Lantern. “We did every iteration of that script we possibly could come up with to please them and allow them to make the movie that looked vaguely like the movie we wanted to make,” Reynolds said of the early development period, but that still could not secure the elusive greenlight. After Green Lantern did even worse than his previous tentpole outing, the obituaries rolled in for Reynolds’ career. At Grantland, Bill Simmons succinctly broke down the disconnect between the mirage of his superstardom and the actuality of his output: “Fact: People believe Ryan Reynolds is a movie star (even though he isn’t).”

Yet Reynolds remained committed to the Deadpool project, even as prospects remained dim and questions lingered how they would handle the bungled rollout. In 2011, producer Lauren Shuler Donner declared the film would have to be “a total reboot. We’re either going to pretend that [Wolverine] didn’t happen, or mock it, which he could do.” The next year, Fox granted enough funds to create some test footage to see the potential of Reynolds’ motor-mouthed snark and a stunt performer’s irreverent assassinations after a leak of Reese and Wernick’s script excited Deadpool fans online. They shot the scene in 2012 … and then it sat on a shelf.

And sat there.

And sat longer.

Meanwhile, Reynolds’ career looked again like it might require life support in the summer of 2013 after the big-budget R.I.P.D. tanked. The additional press exposure allowed him to continue talking up Deadpool, however. “That movie is alive and kicking, and then it’s dead as a doornail,” he told Total Film on the circuit. “It’s like the worst relationship I’ve ever had!” The screenwriters barely fared better with their GI Joe sequel that same year, though they also used the opportunity to talk up the nascent rumblings of the Deadpool film. “Wait until you’ve seen Tim’s test,” Wernick teased /Film, “It’s brilliant.”

Director Tim Miller also kept up the fight, reassuring supporters, “We will never give up! Deadpool is still alive and we’re just waiting for the studio to embrace what an amazingly fucking awesome film this would. Ryan is ready, I am ready, the fans are more than ready.” Little did they know, they already had what they needed. All it took was an act of God – well, more specifically, an illegal act.

On July 28, 2014, a still-unidentified person uploaded the 2012 Deadpool test footage online. The idea had floated around in the creative team, according to Reynolds. “You can look back at an email chain from all of us,” he divulged at the time of the film’s release, “saying, ‘Hey, if this thing is going to stagnate, one of us should just say ‘Whoops, I slipped it online by accident.'” At just under two minutes, the footage made for an ideal snackable and shareable piece of content among rabid comic book fans. It provided all the elements sorely missing from the X-Men Origins debut: silliness, singing, unapologetically gleeful ass-kicking … and even a winking bird-flip to then-Fox studio chief Tom Rothman.

As predicted, the fans ate up the footage, trying to track it down even as Fox attempted to pull it down. “The people started writing and flooding Fox,” according to Reynolds, “begging and pleading for the Deadpool movie to get made.” The film media also pushed the cause to their readers, further increasing the reach of the leak. “The character is, to put it bluntly, frickin’ awesome,” gaming-focused culture site Polygon wrote at the time. “It’s so perfect it will break you[r] heart that this movie hasn’t been made yet,” Gizmodo proclaimed. “Hollywood, make this movie,” pleaded Syfy, “This looks like way too much fun to be stuck in development hell.”

The footage also dropped at a particularly fortuitous moment in time. The leak occurred on the day immediately following 2014’s edition of San Diego Comic-Con, when entertainment press would still be discussing the event but a big announcement at a Hall H panel would not overshadow the footage. Comic-Con also trains fans to anticipate future releases, and it’s only natural that seeing two minutes of exciting Deadpool footage would make them wonder why the film had not received the elusive greenlight.

The sands of the comic book film were also shifting in ways that benefitted a cheeky project like Deadpool. Guardians of the Galaxy would premiere that very Friday, bringing to light a huge appetite for humor and levity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In 2013, Zack Snyder’s morose, joyless Man of Steel pummeled audiences with its self-seriousness (lest we forget, its teaser from summer 2012 invoked Malick). The underwhelming box office and audience response signaled the beginning of the end of the Nolan era, paving the way for something as self-referential and parodic as Deadpool.

Yet there was a reason that James Gunn’s charming space opera did not scratch the entire itch for more childlike, goofy superhero films. “[The leak] showed everyone just how fervent the fans are about Deadpool,” key X-Men brain trust figure Simon Kinberg explained, “and indicated to the studio that there may be a broader audience out there.” Deadpool had more than one-quadrant appeal – as Vulture’s extensive history of the character illuminates, the “Merc with a Mouth” could belong to any outsiders and bullied youth. Deadpool’s charms and grievances resonated with shy white guys with a plethora of masculine rage, survivors of sexual assault and marginalized queer folk alike. These people frequently found the voices they lacked in real life online, and they turned out in full force to encourage Fox’s hand in getting a Deadpool movie made.

“Team Pool needs your official ‘vote’ of support. Let’s break the internet. RETWEET if you would buy a ticket to the DEADPOOL MOVIE,” tweeted screenwriter Rhett Reese on August 7, 2014. Over 47,000 users signaled their agreement. The leak clearly shifted the momentum in favor a Deadpool greenlight. “I had meetings on the Fox lot that following week [after the footage leaked], and that Deadpool footage was all the buzz,” noted Deadpool creator Rob Liefield, “It had an impact. You could see it and feel it in the executive suites. It was palatable.” Deadpool finally received the vote of confidence to move forward from the studio on September 18, but Reynolds and team don’t celebrate that day, or the actual release date of February 12. Every year, Reynolds commemorates the “LeakAversary” with a mock conspiracy map to pinpoint who dropped the footage. “Thank you to the #Deadpool fans who took us from leaked test footage, all the way to the main event,” Reynolds posted on Instagram on the film’s opening weekend. “It’s because of you, we got to make the real Deadpool. The right way.”

The entire Deadpool creative team – Reynolds especially – knew the importance of fan support in making the film possible, and he continued to engage with them in the paratext leading up to release. He took an active role in the film’s marketing campaign, according to Fox’s domestic marketing chief Marc Weinstock, even going so far as to email them pitches and ideas in the wee hours of the morning. Since the film got what Reynolds described as “the equivalent to the cocaine budget for most studio superhero films,” he got creative to replace advertising tonnage with the power of earned media through creative publicity. Reynolds was not about to coast through the finish line with Deadpool, continuing to shoot pieces of additional content for marketing purposes and participating in plentiful promotional events per a report in AdAge.

The rest, as we know it, is history. Deadpool outperformed even the most bullish of expectations at the box office, ginning up $783 million at the global box office. (Until 2019’s Joker bested the sum, it was the highest grossing R-rated film ever.) The film proved a hit with critics, too, garnering Golden Globe nominations for Best Picture as well as Best Actor. Reynolds received some of the best notices of his career, with Bill Simmons’ new site The Ringer declaring his performance as “living proof that even in this age of superhero saturation, an actor can improve, can evolve, can grow into his or her tights.” Best of all, there was no need to leak anything to get a sequel – Deadpool 2 received the greenlight within two months of the original’s release.

But that second installment does not represent the only legacy left behind by Deadpool. It exemplified the tectonic forces reshaping the feedback loop between the producers and the fans of film. From greenlight to release, the Deadpool team put the fans who made its existence possible on a pedestal. (Any doubts? Watch the film’s opening moments, a winking homage to the leak.) While it’s impossible to proclaim that Deadpool itself inspired the damage fans hath wrought in the year to come, their emboldening by success stories like the film’s existence is hard to deny.

This year, fan outcry after a Sonic the Hedgehog trailer forced a 3-month delay in the release for the animators to do entire redesign of the main character. “Thank you for the support. And the criticism. The message is loud and clear… you aren’t happy with the design & you want changes,” director Jeff Fowler tweeted in retreat. Change.org, the platform used to mobilize so many people online in the wake of Blackfish‘s release, now routinely hosts ludicrous petitions like “Have Disney strike Star Wars Episode VIII from the official canon.” Over a million people signed a petition on the site to have HBO reshoot the entire final season of Game of Thrones.

No studio took these pleas seriously, of course. But their existence does indicate a shift in the relationship fans believe they have to the content they expend so much energy obsessing over. Many fans seem to view themselves as creators of culture as much as they see themselves as consumers of it. Many believe their collective online might can rewrite the vision of an artist they deem incorrect.

Deadpool signals the true beginnings in filmmaking of what media scholar Henry Jenkins calls a “participatory culture,” one where fans consider themselves more than just docile receivers of culture. (Perhaps the television equivalent was the 2013 revival of Arrested Development, convincing legions of fans that their favorite show was just one hashtag campaign away from returning from the dead.) If managed correctly, the emergence of this trend could enable studios to better meet market needs. Less Terminator and Men in Black reboots, more chances on a film like Deadpool should excite everyone.

But the expectation of fans that they represent more than just dollar signs will continue reverberating in the years to come. Now, the challenge comes from those executives’ ability to separate the signal of consumer preference from the noise of infantile online cries for revisionism. The fans know now that they have actual voices that studios can hear. The next decade in film may be defined by how closely producers of content listen – and are willing to indulge and obey them.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, Little White Lies and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.

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