In the UK, the film is getting a cinematic release on Wednesday 19 September – so get your best pink outfits picked out because, of course, 'on Wednesdays we wear pink'. Original screenwriter Tina Fey has penned the script and reprises her role again as school's maths teacher Ms Norbury, a role she portrayed in the original film. Although it was originally envisaged as a Paramount Plus original, the film is now being given an exclusive theatrical window – which means that in the immediate future, the only way of seeing it is by making a trip to the pictures.
It turns out Disney’s Asad Ayaz, chief branding officer for the entire conglomerate and president of marketing for the film studio in addition to Disney+, and his team were all in. The mash-up of Disney’s expertise and reach and Reynolds’ marketing savvy, along with assistance from his own marketing firm, Maximum Effort, created a magic spell that helped turn Marvel’ record-smashing Deadpool & Wolverine into the top-grossing R-rated pic of all time. Its global earnings through Aug. 18 are a staggering $1.086 billion, and its run is far from over.
“To me, the biggest challenge was avoiding the more R-rated marketing instincts of Deadpool,” Reynolds tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The marketing was meant to feel all-audience audience as opposed to leaning into a specific comedy, action or superhero genre. The selection of collaborations sent a message about how broad we wanted to go — Heinz, Dave&Busters, NatGeo, TCM and Bachelorette — but so did the way we wrote them, which was playful but not third rail.”
Adds marketing wizard Ayaz, “The R rating actually worked in our favor because it helped differentiate the movie. The challenge was to get the broadest possible audience, especially people who may not have seen a Deadpool movie or may not have seen a Marvel movie yet, or haven’t seen a Marvel movie in a while. Marvel has a large audience now and a broad audience, and the importance of this team-up, which was a long time in the making, really helped us get there.”
Reynolds said the first two films had almost no partners (an exception was Mike’s Hard Lemonade). Early in the process of shooting Deadpool & Wolverine, Ayaz’s partnerships team, working closely with Reynolds, Levy and Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige, came up with a list of strategic partners. “We didn’t get everyone on our list, but we got enough and then added others we weren’t expecting. It is unusual for an R-rated film, but we were always aiming for four-quadrant coverage — even though the film wasn’t exactly ‘safe,’” says Reynolds.
The no-holes-barred campaign was indeed unrivaled in scope for an R-rated film whose first trailer talked about “pegging” (blush). Disney and Maximum Effort were able to team with some of the world’s best-known brands, such as Heinz, and best-known media properties, including ABC’s The Bachelorette and Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County. Even National Geographic — which boasts one of the biggest social media followings the world — jumped on the Deadpool wagon via an upcoming nature documentary series that Reynolds is narrating, Underdogs, which will feature an episode about a real-life Wolverine. (ABC and Nat Geo are owned by Disney.)
Reynolds also programmed a night of movies for Turner Classic Movies. (He chose Grosse Pointe Blank and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.) And there was a pooch screening hosted by Peggy (the dog who played Dogpool) and attended by more than 20 of the top canine influencers on social media, along with Deadpool & Wolverine’s Leslie Uggams. The Best Friends Animal Society is also Disney’s official nonprofit partner and used donations to run a PSA across broadcast and print media highlighting pet adoptions.
Also in the weeks leading up to the film’s debut in the latter half of June, Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, who reprises his role as Wolverine, and director Shawn Levy embarked on whirlwind global publicity tour that spanned 10 cities across four continents, including China, where Marvel hasn’t dispatched any talent since Avengers: Endgame in 2019. Reynolds and Jackman also became the first top Hollywood stars to attend Korea’s largest music festival, the Waterbomb Festival. Other highlights: The trio attended the quarter-final match of the UEFA EUROs 2024, with Deadpool storming the field at the end of the game.
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In the UK, the film is getting a cinematic release on Wednesday 19 September – so get your best pink outfits picked out because, of course, 'on Wednesdays we wear pink'. Original screenwriter Tina Fey has penned the script and reprises her role again as school's maths teacher Ms Norbury, a role she portrayed in the original film. Although it was originally envisaged as a Paramount Plus original, the film is now being given an exclusive theatrical window – which means that in the immediate future, the only way of seeing it is by making a trip to the pictures.
