….
"So yeah a disclaimer, don't try to force this into other movies."
The next hour was a blur.
Regal dissected every major sequence, adding layers of meaning and subtext while maintaining the script's comedic tone.
He restructured the opening, enhanced character motivations, deepened thematic resonance, and added a dozen new fourth-wall breaks that were simultaneously hilarious and emotionally devastating.
"The taxi driver, Dopinder." Regal said, flipping through the script pages.
"He is underutilized, he should be Wade's only real friend - the one normal person who treats Deadpool like a regular customer rather than a freak. Their conversations should be absurdly mundane against the backdrop of superhero chaos."
He acted out a scene:
"'How's the stalking going, Dopinder?'
'Very well, Mr. Pool. I am learning so much about her daily routine.'
'That's... legally questionable, but I am proud of your commitment.'
'Thank you. Where to today?'
'Oh, the usual. Crime scene, probably some torture, maybe brunch after if there's time.'"
Reynolds laughed despite himself. "That's perfect."
"Dopinder represents normalcy." Regal explained. "He is Wade's tether to the regular world, the reminder that underneath the costume and the scarring and the killing, there's still a guy who needs a ride and makes small talk with his cab driver."
The whiteboard was now covered in notes, arrows connecting different scenes, dialogue snippets, thematic threads weaving through the entire narrative.
Samantha knocked on the door. "Dinner's here. Also, it's 7:30."
Five and a half hours had passed. Reynolds hadn't noticed.
….
Samantha knocked on the door. "Dinner's here. Also, it's 7:30."
Five and a half hours had passed. Reynolds hadn't noticed.
They ate while Regal continued talking, breaking down the screenplay scene by scene, adding details that elevated every moment from good to exceptional.
"The romance between Wade and Vanessa." Regal said between bites of Thai food. "Your montage is cute - the holiday-themed sex scenes, the proposal. But it needs an edge."
"How so?" Levy asked.
"By making their relationship genuinely weird. Without a quirky-weird, but two damaged people who found each other and decided their specific brands of crazy fit together.
"Vanessa isn't some innocent girlfriend who needs protecting. She is as fucked up as Wade, just in different ways. She meets his darkness with her own and somehow that makes them work."
….
By 9:00 PM, the original script had been completely transformed.
It wasn't exactly rewritten - Regal had kept about seventy percent of Reynolds and Levy's actual dialogue.
But he had restructured scenes, deepened character motivations, added layers of meaning, and injected a philosophical undercurrent that elevated the entire story.
The freeway opening was now non-linear, cutting between present-day action and fragmented flashbacks. Wade's relationship with Vanessa had emotional depth beyond typical superhero romance. Ajax became a legitimate ideological opponent rather than a one-note villain.
The fourth-wall breaks demolished narrative convention while somehow making the story more coherent.
And the ending—
"You are cutting the typical hero shot." Levy said, reading through Regal's notes. "Wade defeats Ajax, gets the girl, but there is no triumphant final moment?"
"There is a triumphant moment." Regal corrected. "It's just not what audiences expect."
He explained: After defeating Ajax, Wade and Vanessa reunite. But instead of a romantic kiss in the rain or a heroic pose against the sunset, Wade turns to the camera.
"'And that's the end of our little story. Wade gets the girl, the bad guy dies, everyone learns an important lesson about the power of friendship. Except we didn't, because this is Deadpool, and I don't do lessons.'
He pauses.
"But seriously, if you stayed through all this violence and dick jokes looking for some deeper meaning... Here it is: Life is short, love is real, and scarred or not, ugly or not, immortal or not, connection matters. Also, chimichangas are delicious. The end."
He salutes the camera.
"See you in the sequel. If the studio doesn't fuck this up."
Roll credits.
Reynolds stared at the notes, then at Regal. "This is something only greenlit because it's you…"
It's true.
Even if Reynolds had written this exact script, he doubted that any other studio would ever let it materialise.
"That's Deadpool." Regal said simply. "He can't exist in one mode, he is always both - the joke and the heart, the violence and the vulnerability, the meta-commentary and the genuine emotion. The moment you flatten him into just one thing, you have lost what makes him special."
Reynolds felt something complicated in his chest - pride, gratitude, and a slight sting of inadequacy. Three months of work, elevated to a new level in a single afternoon by someone who barely seemed to be trying.
"So what now?" he asked quietly.
"Now?" Regal collected the papers scattered across the table, organizing them into a neat stack. "Now you take these notes, refine them in your own voice, and polish the script until you feel like it. Then we go into pre-production properly - casting, location scouting, storyboarding the action sequences. We are shooting this in six months."
Levy stared at him. "Six months?"
Reynolds let out a low whistle. "That's… fast."
Regal finished. "I believe it's doable. Ryan, you are the writer and starring. Shawn, I am fine with you directing it. I am executive producing, so that you all have a free hand in doing what you want. And finally for this to succeed–
"You two need to own this film. Make it yours."
He picked up the revised script outline, the pages now covered in annotations and new scene descriptions.
"But before any of that, I need you both to understand something."
Reynolds and Levy waited.
"This film will be divisive." Regal said seriously. "Critics will either love it or hate it. I bet my money on the second part. Audiences will either embrace it completely or reject it entirely.
"There is no middle ground with Deadpool - you are either in on the joke or you are the joke. And that's okay. We are not making this film for universal appeal. We are making it for the people who get it."
"And if they don't?" Reynolds asked.
"Then we have still made the most honest adaptation of the character possible. I would rather fail trying to do something revolutionary than succeed making something safe and forgettable."
He extended his hand. "Are you in? Like, really in?
"Because once we start production, there is no compromise. We commit completely to this vision or we don't do it at all."
Reynolds took his hand without hesitation. "I am in."
Levy joined them. "All in."
Regal nodded, satisfied. "Good. Samantha will schedule follow-up meetings for next week. We will start breaking down the budget properly, figuring out how to maximize every dollar. Ryan, I trust you have been frugal with the pre-production funds?"
Levy let out a quiet laugh. "If Ryan's in charge, trust me, I am discovering cafés with ratings I didn't even know existed."
Regal wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but the exchange was obviously an inside joke, so he let it go.
He glanced at his watch. "It's getting late. Head home, think over everything we covered today, and come back with your best."
As Reynolds and Levy began packing up their things, Regal spoke again.
"Ryan? One more thing."
Reynolds paused, looking back.
"For what it's worth, your first draft was strong. You have the instincts of a writer. You understand Wade Wilson at his core. All I did was help you phrase what you already grasped."
Reynolds felt some of the earlier doubt loosen in his chest, replaced by something steadier. "I appreciate that. And… Thanks for everything. For backing this character, for trusting me to shape him."
Regal shook his head lightly. "Give yourself the credit. You are the one who spent three months in questionable cafés turning ideas into pages. I only spent five hours refining what you had already created."
….
Outside, the Los Angeles night felt unusually cool, the kind of calm that made the whole city seem to exhale.
Reynolds and Levy stood in the quiet parking lot, neither ready to get into their cars yet.
"That was…" Levy began, unable to finish the sentence.
"Yeah." Reynolds replied. It was all that needed to be said.
"In five hours he reshaped the entire script."
"Five and a half." Reynolds murmured, half to himself.
Levy ran a hand through his hair. "Point is - we spent three months building that draft, and he walked in, spent an afternoon with it, and turned it into something else entirely."
Reynolds glanced down at the folder he was holding, thick with Regal's notes, markups, and structural fixes that would take weeks to integrate. "You know what the wild part is?"
Levy looked at him. "What?"
"He is right, about all of it. Every change he suggested, deepening of character motivation, and structural adjustment–
"It is all correct. I can't think of a single note I argue with."
Levy let out a nervous, breathy laugh. "We are screwed, aren't we? Not in the doomed sense, more like… we are making a movie with someone who is operating on a plane the rest of us don't even visit."
"Pretty much." Reynolds said, pulling open his car door.
Levy stared at him. "And we are just… okay with that?"
Reynolds grinned. "We better be. Because if we somehow managed to at least produce an output matching 80% of what we discussed in these five hours, imagine what the finished film is going to look like."
Levy shook his head in disbelief. "Terrifying."
"Terrifying." Reynolds agreed, slipping into the driver's seat. "And it's going to be incredible."
He drove home in a daze, his mind replaying the entire session.
The way Regal had dissected every scene, the casual brilliance with which he had solved narrative problems that had plagued them for weeks.
Three months of work, elevated to a new level in an afternoon.
It should have felt crushing. Instead, it felt like validation - proof that he had been on the right track, that his instincts about Wade Wilson were correct.
Regal hadn't torn down what they'd built; he had simply shown them how much higher they could build.
Reynolds drove home, parked, and went straight to his home 'office'. Despite the late hour, and having been in meetings for over seven hours, he wasn't tired.
He opened his laptop, created a new document titled "DEADPOOL - REVISION DRAFT 2." and began implementing Regal's notes.
The freeway opening sequence, now restructured non-linearly. Wade's deeper psychological transformation. Vanessa's enhanced characterization. Ajax's ideological motivation.
His fingers flew across the keyboard, the words coming easier now that he understood the deeper architecture supporting them.
By 3:00 AM, he had restructured the first thirty pages. By dawn, he had made it through the entire first act.
He should sleep. He knew that. But Deadpool was alive in his mind now, more vivid than ever, and the only way to quiet that voice was to get it onto the page properly.
Around 7:00 AM, his phone buzzed with a text from Levy:
[LEVY: Can't sleep. Been working on visual storyboards for the freeway sequence. This is going to be insane.]
Reynolds smiled and typed back:
[REYNOLDS: Same. On page 45 of revisions. Every penny on screen?]
[LEVY: Every goddamn penny.]
Three months of foundation work. Five hours of elevation, and now, the real work began - taking Regal's vision and making it reality.
Reynolds saved his progress, finally allowing himself to fall onto his couch for a few hours of rest.
In his dreams, Deadpool stood on a freeway overpass, katanas drawn, looking directly at him.
"You're doing good, Reynolds." Dream-Deadpool said. "Don't fuck it up now."
"I won't." Reynolds promised.
"Damn right you won't. Now wake up and finish that script. We've got a movie to make."
Reynolds woke up at noon, groggy but determined.
He made coffee - good coffee this time, not the terrible cafe stuff - and returned to his laptop.
The script was coming together. Better than together - it was becoming exactly what Deadpool deserved.
Revolutionary. Irreverent. And somehow, despite all the meta-commentary and fourth-wall breaks, genuinely emotional.
Just like Regal had promised.
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
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