“I love the dumpster diving, scavenge and use every opportunity.”

Ryan Reynolds has shared the unexpected positive to last year’s delayed Deadpool 3 filming as a result of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Filming on the third Deadpool instalment began in May last year, but production was shut down in July when the strike was announced to comply with guidelines. Deadpool 3 filming then resumed again in late winter, shortly after the strike ended on November 7.

Speaking at the Deadpool & Wolverine press conference today attended by Digital Spy, Reynolds said that the filming pause was somewhat of a blessing, allowing them time and energy to “better tell the story”.

“If you could, from a fiscal point of view, stop a movie right in the middle, assess everything you have, edit the hour of footage you have, put it together and then just zoom out [to look at it],” he begins.

“One of the things I realised I’m so lucky to have in this partnership with Shawn [Levy] and Hugh [Jackman] is this ability to pivot, but do it responsibly. It’s not impetuous, we’re all mindful of budgets and time constraints, and the idea that too much time and too much money will annihilate creativity in a lot of ways.

“I love it, we’re just dumpster divers, we scavenge and use every opportunity – good or bad – to tell the story. Many of the constraints from the top down at Marvel, we used to our own benefits. Coming back after the strikes, we had entire character arcs.”

Director Shawn Levy agreed that the filming break enabled them to really deliver the true crux of what Deadpool & Wolverine should be.

“We talk a lot about, ‘You gotta listen to your movie’,” he said. “Whatever your initial intentions were, listen to your movie and it’s going to tell you want it wants to be. We edited the hour of the movie that we had shot, so we were able to sit and listen to our movie.”

The Crown actor Emma Corrin, who appears as supervillain Cassandra Nova in the third movie, also shared how the production hiatus served their character portrayal.

“We all watched it,” they said of the first edit. “I hadn’t started shooting yet. I was meant to start in the summer and then the strike happened. When I came back, I watched the film and it said, ‘Cassandra here’.

“It was incredible,” they continued. “I could see completely what the movie [was]. You shoot out of chronological order all the time, it’s quite confusing when you have a first day because you don’t really know what you’re catching up with and the place that you’re at in the movie.

“I could literally see what you wanted her to be and what you needed her to be in those moments in terms of this epic narrative arc that you created. It was incredible.”

As a result of the filming delay, Marvel ended up pushing Deadpool 3‘s release date back from May to July 2024. Audiences will finally be able to see the highly-anticipated threequel – with Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine – later this month.

Deadpool & Wolverine is released in UK cinemas on July 25 and in US cinemas on July 26