Ryan Reynolds ignored movie studio bosses’ suggestions to hire a “millennial-friendly” singer for the Deadpool 2 theme song because he wanted a “legend” like Celine Dion.
The pop icon recently recorded the original tune Ashes for the new movie, and even formed an unlikely duo with Reynolds‘ anti-hero alter ego for the funny music video, which was shot by the film’s director, David Leitch, at Las Vegas’ The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, where Celine stages her concert residency.
Ryan reveals he took a gamble by reaching out to his fellow Canadian about the project, because 20th Century Fox officials had already lined up a string of younger artists instead.
“I tried to make it a Canadian connection,” the actor told breakfast show Good Morning America.
“We had this… amazing theme song for the movie and we wanted someone magical to sing it and dance to it,” he recalled. “The studio had a whole bunch of really incredible and talented millennial-friendly singers, and I just thought, ‘Let’s go for a legend. Who’s the last person that did the great movie/music tie-in?’ And it was Celine in Titanic, and not only that, she’s just the best of the best.”
Ryan sent a personal plea to Dion, who recorded the classic My Heart Will Go On for the disaster movie back in 1997, and he was both surprised and thrilled when she agreed to the whole proposal.
“So I wrote her a letter…,” he shared. “Somehow, someway she said yes, and then she said yes again to a completely insane music video.”
The promo features professional dancer Yanis Marshall dressed up as Ryan’s masked mercenary Deadpool to perform an interpretive dance – all while wearing high heels to top off his full-body red and black costume, as Celine belts out the song onstage. The odd pair also shares a warm embrace towards the end of the track.
The Ashes video has proved to be a hit with fans since its release earlier this month (May18), but Ryan fears filmmakers now won’t be able to top Celine if they make another sequel.
“I don’t even know what we’d do for Deadpool 3!” he chuckled, before joking, “The whole thing might just be me getting an appendix operation or something! I don’t know what we’ll do.”
Deadpool 2, which also stars Josh Brolin, opens in theatres this week (18May18).
