If Ryan Reynolds has the desire to make a joke or a reference that he is passionate about, he is not one to treat nickels as though they are manhole covers – and two great examples of this have emerged from the history of the Deadpool franchise. First, there was the revelation back in 2016 that $10,000 of the film's budget was allocated so that the actor could wear a shirt featuring the likeness of Bea Arthur (a special easter egg for Deadpool fans). That's pretty wild... but even more wild is that the new revelation that the actor/producer spent $5,000 of his own money for the rights to make a special John Candy joke in all three of the Marvel films.
Reynolds discussed the special expenditure recently during a Q&A in New York following a screening of the new documentary John Candy: I Like Me (which is presently available to stream with an Amazon Prime subscription). The "joke" in question is a copy of the prop book The Canadian Mounted, which is a novel that Candy's character reads in the classic comedy Planes, Trains, And Automobiles. The tome appears in Deadpool, Deadpool 2, and Deadpool & Wolverine... but only because he ponied up a lot of money to Paramount Pictures for the rights. He explained (via People),
