Deadpool Director Talks Original's Shortcomings, Sequel Plans

After the huge box office performance of this year's Deadpool, it came as little surprise last week when Fox announced a sequel had officially gotten the green light. Now, director Tim Miller has shed some new light on how the movie is shaping up and what his goals are for it, among other things.

It's still very much early days for the Deadpool sequel, Miller told Collider, explaining that he's done some basic design work, but it won't officially enter production until the script is ready.

"The writers have been working on the script…The script comes first," he said. "You've got to get that."

The writing team behind the first Deadpool, including Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, are coming back for the sequel. As of yet, there is no word on the follow-up's story, but you can probably expect it to be a tongue-in-cheek, fourth wall-breaking, over-the-top action movie like the first one.

Fox has not announced a release date or even a release window for the Deadpool sequel. Miller says some dates have been floated already, but assures that Fox isn't pushing him to get the movie out there before he thinks it's ready.

"None of the times that have been under discussion have made me go, 'Oh no, you're going to make me do something horrible just to meet that [release date],'" he explained. "They want it to be great, and they're giving us the time to make it great."

Deadpool was generally well-received, but Miller says it had some flaws that he'd like to address in the sequel.

"I don't look at Deadpool and think, 'Oh, that's a perfect movie.' I look at it and go, 'Oh, God, there's so much stuff I could do better,'" Miller explained. "What you don't want to do is all the stupid stuff like 'Oh, now it has to be twice as big because people are going to be bored!' or 'It's going to have three times the villains!'"

This matches up with what Wernick said earlier this year. At the time, he explained that the creative team was not looking for a huge budget for the sequel.

"We don't want $150 million to go make the next movie; that's not Deadpool," Wernick said earlier this year. "Deadpool doesn't lift cities up into the air or battle aliens coming down to earth; that's just not Deadpool. So we're happy in that little small budget range that they have us in; we don't wanna blow this next one out."

The first Deadpool was produced on an estimated $58 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo.

Miller added that he thinks he didn't do a great job with some of Deadpool's establishing shots while he also admits that he came up short in his effort to establish a sense of scope. "It feels like a small indie movie, and some of that works well, but some of it I think I could have done a better job of making this feel like a world a little more," he said.

Another area Miller hopes to improve upon for the Deadpool sequel is in terms of further explaining the villains' motivations to viewers. The main antagonist of the first movie, Ajax, left something to be desired in this area.

Additionally, fans may recall that Deadpool ended with a teaser for the character Cable. It's too early to say which actor might play Cable in the sequel, Miller said, explaining that he's going to wait until the script is finished to start thinking about that.

Collider's full interview with Miller is a good watch, touching on other topics around Deadpool (such as how he wants the movie to have a subtitle rather than a number), as well as plans for an X-Force movie and more. You can watch it here at Collider or through the embed below.

The Deadpool sequel will star Ryan Reynolds--who is getting a bigger payday for the movie--but other casting announcements have not yet been made.