Ryan Reynolds paid a significant sum of his own money to secure an original Planes, Trains, and Automobiles prop for use in all three Deadpool movies.
Reynolds Paid Out of Pocket…3 Times
Appropriately enough, Reynolds revealed the financial tidbit during a post-screening discussion alongside Colin Hanks, director of the documentary John Candy: I Like Me, which Reynolds produced. Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman, moderated the panel. The star revealed that he ponied up $5,000 of his own cash to use a prop book entitled The Canadian Mounted, which was made specifically for John Hughes’ classic road comedy. The reference recurs in each of the Deadpool movies, including last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine.
“I called Paramount and said, ‘Can I use the book, The Canadian Mounted that he’s reading in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?’ And I thought they’d just go, ‘Of course!’ ” Reynolds recalled. “And they were like, ‘Yeah, sure—for $5,000.’ I went ‘Alright, back off. You can have $5,000. Okay.’ I put my own salary back in [the first Deadpool], why stop now? So I licensed the book.”
Prop Recurs in All 3 ‘Deadpool’ Movies
Reynolds’ character, Wade Wilson, is shown reading the book in Deadpool (2016), a reference to Candy’s hotel-room reading material in Planes, Trains. But even after that movie was a surprise hit at the box office, Paramount still made Reynolds pay to use the prop in subsequent sequels. “Two years later and we’re doing Deadpool 2 and I said ‘Okay, give me the book,’ and they’re like, ‘Yeah, $5,000,'” Reynolds recalled to laughter. “It was for a book that isn’t even a book, it’s just a cover!”
But Reynolds reported that he was happy to pay out a total of (at least) $15,000 to the studio because Candy had such an impact on his career. The Uncle Buck star died in 1994 at 43. “Deadpool & Wolverine is really kind of written in the spirit of redemption. It’s a story about redemption,” he said before admitting that “it’s Planes, Trains,” referring to the plot.
