Deadpool is currently the highest-grossing superhero franchise since 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home. It has even toppled the Thor film series in the process. However, there was a time when studios were iffy about greenlighting this now billion-dollar franchise, owing to its R-rated nature. Fox feared that the movie would bomb at the box office as it did not fit with their established X-Men franchise and was also considered an outlier in the superhero movie market. The effect of these doubts and anxiety reflected on director Tim Miller’s paycheck. 

Miller recently shared his shocking low salary for the 2016 movie, right after the billion-dollar performance of the Ryan Reynolds starrer. 

The first Deadpool movie earned $782.6 million globally against a budget of $58 million. The film broke the record for the highest-grossing R-rated movie at the time and even left the previous X-Men movies behind, proving everyone’s fears wrong. However, that success, unfortunately, could not translate into a high paycheck for first-time director, Tim Miller. In a conversation with Collider, Miller recently revealed that he only made a mere $225,000 for the movie, which was very low for a film with such massive success and cultural impact.

“That's not a ton of money,” Miller added. The filmmaker shared that while he feels nothing but pride seeing the underdog franchise becoming a phenomenon, he also regrets not making a merchandising deal so he “could get some money from all of that”. Miller helmed the 2016 movie when no one expected it to make any waves. Not only was the film given a very low budget in comparison with other superhero movies, it was also released in the dump months. Earlier, the director shared why he left the franchise after the first movie. 

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Back in 2019, Tim Miller revealed that he removed himself from the franchise because of its lead, Ryan Reynolds. 

It is no secret that Ryan Reynolds fought tooth and nails to get the first Deadpool movie made- and so did Tim Miller. However, soon, the two started having creative differences when envisioning the future of the franchise. During an appearance on the KCRW podcast, Miller shared that he dropped out of Deadpool’s second installment because “Ryan Reynolds wanted to be in control of the franchise”. 

Miller was then replaced by David Leitch for the 2018 blockbuster. Taking a seemingly subtle dig at his successors, Miller shared that while other directors can work in such conditions, he cannot. “I don’t think you can negotiate every creative decision,” added the 43-year-old. Despite kickstarting a prominent superhero franchise, it seems clear that Miller had plenty of reasons to feel let down by his time in it.

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