The first time Deadpool appeared on the big screen was in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with Ryan Reynolds playing a different Merc with a Mouth. He worked hard to get his own franchise and managed to do that with 2016’s Deadpool.

The first installment of the superhero movie was a resounding success, leading to two more sequels, the latest one released this year, Deadpool & Wolverine. Each installment had a different director at the helm, starting with Tim Miller, David Leitch, and Shawn Levy, respectively. In a new interview with Collider, Miller revealed he got a shockingly low salary, despite the film’s big budget and even bigger revenue.

Produced by 20th Century Fox alongside Marvel Entertainment, 2016’s Deadpool had a relatively modest budget of $58 million, which is low compared to 2018’s Deadpool 2‘s $110 million budget, and 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine‘s $200 million budget. However, it was also a huge gamble. The first installment follows Wade Wilson’s origin as Deadpool after being exposed to an experiment that gave him accelerating healing powers. It had Tim Miller in his directorial feature debut and his salary was very low.

It’s not really a profitable thing to be a first-time director in Hollywood.

During a panel at CCXP in São Paulo, Brazil alongside The Walking Dead comic book writer and co-creator Robert Kirkman and Love, Death & Robots director Dave Wilson, Miller revealed he only received a salary of $225,000, which was very low considering its budget and its overall gross of $781.9 million worldwide (via The Numbers).

At the same time, it was his first feature, and Miller was grateful for the opportunity. “You know what I feel? Nothing but pride. I mean, I feel like every time I walk down the aisles out there on the floor of CCXP and I see all these Deadpool figurines, I think they wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t made that film. And I feel uniquely fortunate that I could be part of it. Then, then my second thought is, I wish my director deals had a piece of the merchandising so that I could get some money from all of that.“

He continued, “You guys might not know, but it’s not really a profitable thing to be a first-time director in Hollywood, and I’ll tell you exactly,” Miller revealed. “I got $225,000 to direct Deadpool. I know it sounds like a lot of money, but for two years of work, that’s not a ton of money. Not that I’m not grateful, I’m f***ing grateful, that’s the way it is because you’re supposed to when you’re a first-time director. My agent said ‘Dude, you make more on an episode of The Walking Dead!‘

“I think a lot of people think that everyone’s getting paid millions and millions in Hollywood. It’s just not the case, not always. I don’t want to sound like I wasn’t grateful because I had worked, I was 50 when I got a chance to direct Deadpool, and I really thought I wasn’t going to get a chance to direct a movie even though I’d wanted to my whole life.“

Ryan Reynolds Previously Addressed Giving Up His Salary to Pay the Writers

Nowadays, the IP is a guaranteed success. 2016’s Deadpool made $781.9 million, adding $110.1 million in DVD and Blu-ray sales. The sequel, which arrived two years later in 2018, grossed only slightly above the first one, with a total run of $786.3 million, but it was still a major success considering the $110 million budget. The 2024 sequel Deadpool & Wolverine, which also brought back Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and marked their joint debut in the MCU, grossed $1.33 billion, becoming the second highest-grossing film of 2024 after Inside Out 2, and the biggest live-action movie. However, Ryan Reynolds also addressed how difficult it was to get it started.

“No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success,” Reynolds told The New York Times over the summer when promoting Deadpool & Wolverine. “I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen: 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.”

All three Deadpool movies are available to stream on Disney+.