Following Tim Miller departing Deadpool 2 over creative differences with Ryan Reynolds, now it’s learned Deadpool 2 has a director with John Wick‘s co-director David Leitch.
It’s reported David Leitch recently met Ryan Reynolds to talk about Deadpool 2 in New York with the deal signed shortly after their meeting.
Fox is also developing Deadpool 3, which will introduce X-Force, and they are looking for a separate director for that as well.
I’m a huge fan of John Wick, so this is definitely good news. Not only did David Leitch co-direct and work on the stunt choreography for John Wick, but Leitch is also known for fight and stunt work on Captain America: Civil War, Fight Club, V For Vendetta, Hitman: Agent 47, Bourne, Matrix, Tron and lots more. Leitch actually was the stunt double for Brad Pitt and Jean-Claude Van Damme at one time. David Leitch also recently wrapped his first feature film, the Cold War thriller The Coldest City, which stars Charlize Theron.
David Leitch told actionflickchick how he got his start in Hollywood:
I did martial arts, and martial arts growing up. When I was in college, I had some friends that were martial artists who I had competed with, and they started to do stunt work. They told me “When you finish college you’ve got to come out and we’re already working in movies, doing stunt work.” I was like, “What is that about?” “Well we get to make fight scenes and use all the martial art skills that we can’t really use anywhere else.” I was like “All right, that sounds like fun.” One summer I went out to work with those guys on a film in Mexico, and just sort of dragged stunt pads around and carried equipment. I got to see what they were doing, and I packed up my car the next month and moved to California. From there, I had the harsh reality of what it took to become a stunt man. It takes a lot of training, and a lot of connections. It takes getting out there and getting to know the right people. It’s kind of like anything in the movie business, it’s who you know at some level and if you can get your resume [or] your demo tape and start rehearsing, you might get a shot at doing some kind of movie, or acting, or whatever. That’s kind of how it happened for me.
