The naughtiest Disney movie of all time could have been even raunchier. Deadpool & Wolverine featured jokes about pegging, cocaine and Marvel kingpin Kevin Feige, but apparently, that was the clean stuff. Director and writer Shawn Levy told Entertainment Weekly that despite receiving free rein to make the movie as nasty as he and Ryan Reynolds wanted, there was one joke that had to be scrubbed from the final cut.
“The general rule is to never punch down and to only take the piss out of people who can take it,” Levy told EW, using Hugh Jackman as an example. (Jackman OK’d jokes about his divorce, as did Jennifer Garner with gags about Ben Affleck.) “When it was about Hugh in a meta way, Hugh was always the first to laugh uproariously.”
But Levy and company were asked to change another line of dialogue that went too far. In a film full of filthy jokes, what could the offense have been? “We have made a pact, Ryan and I, to go to our grave with that line, but I will say that it was replaced with an equally dirty line of dialogue about Pinocchio shoving his face up Deadpool’s ass and starting to lie like crazy,” Levy revealed. “I was like, ‘Ryan, that’s your replacement line in response to, ‘Can we clean it up?’ That’s Ryan Reynolds for you, audacious to the very edge.”
Potty-mouthed Deadpool never seemed like a fit for Disney’s MCU but Levy says he got little pushback from the higher-ups. “This movie — it’s by far the biggest movie I’ve ever made — it may very well be the most creative autonomy I’ve ever had,” he explained.
For proof, look no further than the extraordinary number of F-bombs detonated in the R-rated film. Deadpool & Wolverine featured 118 F-words, breaking the previous MCU record by about 118 or so. While that’s a lot for, say, an Ant-Man movie, 118 F-bombs is nowhere near the all-time record. Deadpool & Wolverine still ranks far behind these movies for the most F-words thrown around, according to The Hollywood Reporter:
- Scarface: 226
- The Big Lebowski: 260
- Pulp Fiction: 265
- Reservoir Dogs: 269
- Straight Outta Compton: 392
- Casino: 422
- Uncut Gems: 560 (You’ve got your work cut out for you, Happy Gilmore 2.)
- The Wolf of Wall Street: 569
Now that’s a lot of effing profanity.