Beyond bringing one of Marvel’s favorite duos together, there’s another reason why “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a big deal: The upcoming movie marks a rare use of “Like a Prayer,” and you better believe that star Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy have a good story about how they came to use the Madonna hit.
Landing the rights to the song required a “personal meeting” with the seven-time Grammy winner. During that meeting, the team showed Madonna exactly how they wanted to use the song.
“She gave a great note. My God, she watched it and I’m not kidding, just was like, ‘You need to do this, this, and this in this moment,’ and damn it, if she wasn’t like spot on and right,” Reynolds said during a SiriusXM Town Hall special hosted by Jess Cagle that first aired last Friday.
“We literally went into a new recording session within 48 hours to do this one note. She had only one note and it was a great note, and it made the sequence better,” Levy added.
Though neither said exactly what that one note was, “Like a Prayer” appears in the first trailer for the upcoming movie. During the interview, Reynolds also emphasized that it was a “big deal” to get any song by Madonna, let alone one of her all-time bestsellers. Levy speculated that the team had an “advantage” because they knew Madonna’s son was a fan of the film franchise.
“Madonna doesn’t just license the song, you know, and particularly that song has not been licensed,” Reynolds said. “So, it was a big deal to ask for it and certainly a bigger deal to use it. We went over and met with her and showed her how it was being used and where and why.”
“It did feel like we were meeting royalty. I’ll say that,” Levy added.
“Well, of course. I even asked someone who worked with her. I was like, ‘Am I allowed to just say Madonna?’ Like, ‘Hello Madonna?’” Reynolds said.
Reynolds went on to call the meeting one of the “great thrills of my life,” and Levy called it “one of the most fun evenings we’ve had.” Watch the full interview above.
A sequel to “Deadpool” and “Deadpool 2,” “Deadpool & Wolverine” marks the first movie set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have an R rating. It will see Jackman reprise his role from the “X-Men” film series and is part of Phase 5 of the MCU. The movie takes place six years after the events of the second “Deadpool” movie. After giving up his past as a mercenary, Deadpool is pulled from his quiet life by the Time Variance Authority (TVA) and put on a mission with Wolverine that will change the history of the MCU. The movie premieres in the United States July 26.
