Deadpool director Tim Miller has revealed the shocking figure he was paid for the 2016 Ryan Reynolds superhero film.
Miller had never before directed a feature film when he signed on to make the first instalment of Deadpool.
The sweary superhero flick was a huge hit for Marvel, earning over $782m (£624m) at the box office worldwide. Its success spawned two sequels: Deadpool 2 in 2018, and Deadpool vs Wolverine in 2024.
Released earlier this year, Deadpool vs Wolverine, made $205m (£160m) at the US box office, making it the best ever opening for an R-rated film
Miller, who directed only the first of the three films, said that being a first-time director was not exactly “profitable” despite the overwhelming success of his movie.
He also revealed to Collider exactly how much he was paid to direct the film, which included two years of work.
“You guys might not know, but it’s not really a profitable thing to be a first time director in Hollywood, and I’ll tell you exactly,” he said. “I got $225,000 (£179,550) to direct Deadpool.”
He continued: “I know it sounds like a lot of money, but for two years of work, that’s not a ton of money.”
Miller – whose other directing credits include the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots and Terminator: Dark Fate – reiterated that he remains “grateful” for the experience.
“Not that I’m not grateful, I’m f***ing grateful, that’s the way it is because you’re supposed to when you’re a first-time director,” he said. “My agent said ‘Dude, you make more on an episode of The Walking Dead!’”
Miller told the publication that he feels “uniquely fortunate” to have been a part of what has since become a colossal franchise.
“Then, then my second thought is, I wish my director deals had a piece of the merchandising so that I could get some money from all of that,” he said.
The second Deadpool film, released in 2018, was directed by David Leitch, with Shawn Levy taking over for the third instalment, which cast Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (a character newly owned by Disney after it bought Fox in 2019) opposite Reynolds.
Although the film was loved by fans, it did not fare so well with critics. In a two-star review, The Independent’s TV critic Clarisee Loughrey called the sequel “a tedious and annoying corporate merger of a film”.
“Reynolds is as faithful an iteration of the character as we’ll likely ever get, and his presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at least opens up its action sequences to fun, nasty new ways to dispatch extras, even if director Shawn Levy isn’t quite sure how to capture them legibly on film,” wrote Loughrey.
