MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: The original Deadpool script had a recurring gag involving the troubled singer, Amy Winehouse.

In 2016, Deadpool was released and it was a huge surprise hit...

However, the film was initially going to be be a follow-up to the bizarre take on Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which came out in 2009. The idea is that the Deadpool in the spin-off film could take an entirely different take on the character (i.e. a take actually based on what the character looked and acted like in the comics), but he had to first appear in the Wolverine movie. That's why Ryan Reynolds took the role, even knowing how bad the character was, as that was considered, at the time, the only way that he would be able to play the character in the follow-up movie. So Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick wrote a Deadpool script in 2010 that was BASICALLY what we would see in 2016.

Of course, though, Deadpool was SO bad in the first movie that the plans to spin off the character back in 2010 fell by the wayside.

Still, Tim Miller was hired to direct in 2011, but it would take years before the movie was finally approved for actual filming. During that time, it was turned from an R-rated film to a PG-13 film, test footage was filmed and disliked, test footage was filmed and loved (that was the key moment, when test footage in 2014 were leaked and the fans reacted awesomely) and then finally the film was approved, just with a significantly pared down budget.

Meanwhile, Reese and Wernick had been doing new versions of their original script pretty much every year. The final movie was very close to their original script. One moment from the original script that didn't make it into the final film, though, was a recurring subplot involving...Amy Winehouse?

A recurring gag in the original script would involve the characters having a "Dead Pool" on each other (betting when they would die), but also a separate on for the trouble singer, who had been dealing with drug problems for years at that point in time.

Throughout the film, we would see a drunk Winehouse (assuredly played by a lookalike actress and not the actual singer) almost die in all sorts of bizarre manners before, at the end of the movie, she gets hit by a double-decker bus and killed. Deadpool would then turn to the camera and say, "And you woulda thought an overdose."

Obviously, when the actress actually DID die (from alcohol poisoning rather than a drug overdose), the recurring bit was cut from the film.

The legend is...

STATUS: True

Be sure to check out my archive of Movie Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film. Click here for more legends specifically about superhero movies!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com.