Ryan Reynolds 'let go of getting paid' so first Deadpool could be made

Ryan Reynolds "let go of getting paid" on the first Deadpool movie.

The move allowed the film to finally reach screens after the actor and producer had been trying for almost a decade to get it made.

"When I finally got to make it, it had been almost 10 years at that point. No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success," he told The New York Times. "I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen."

He added, "They wouldn't allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de-facto writers room."

The film had a production budget of $58 million (£44.6 million), which isn't much in Hollywood standards. However, Ryan, 47, believes the tight budget actually made the movie better.

"It was a lesson in a couple of senses. I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money," he said. "It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie. I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn't felt like that in a long, long time. I remembered wanting to feel that more - not just on Deadpool, but on anything."

Deadpool was released in 2016 and made nearly $783 million (£602 million) at the worldwide box office. The third film in the franchise, Deadpool & Wolverine, is set to be released on 26 July.