The Deadpool & Wolverine Joke Disney Asked Ryan Reynolds To Cut

The line that Disney reportedly asked Ryan Reynolds to take out of "Deadpool & Wolverine" has finally been revealed, and it's a doozy. The film's script has recently become available online just in time for awards season, and as ScreenTime reports, it includes the cut joke that director Shawn Levy once told Entertainment Weekly he and Reynolds had agreed to take to their grave.

On X, ScreenTime reposted the joke as it appears in a copy of the "Deadpool & Wolverine" script that's publicly available on the Disney Debut website. "We can't even afford one more X-Man?" Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Reynolds) was originally meant to whine upon meeting up with Gambit (Channing Tatum) and the other characters from Fox's Marvel movies, only to learn that Magneto isn't among them. "Disney is so cheap. I can barely breathe with all this Mickey Mouse c**k in my throat."

So, yeah, this seems like a line that Disney higher-ups would not love. "Deadpool & Wolverine" takes plenty of meta jabs at the company that made it and gets away with some truly wild jokes, but sexualizing the classic mouse mascot while also implying that Disney is both cheap and controlling when it comes to its film productions was apparently a bridge too far. Reynolds also spoke about the cut joke at an event in New York (as covered by Comic Book Resources) back in September, and at the time noted that Disney interfered with the movie much less than he had anticipated. "There was only one line in the entire film that they asked me to take out," he explained, "And they were right."

Reynolds added that he'd expected there to be "a red-line lawyer on every page" of the film's script, but for the most part the Disney and Marvel machines apparently spared the movie any censorship. As for the official explanation given for cutting the Mickey Mouse fellatio joke? Reynolds claimed he heard from Disney CEO Bob Iger himself, who he paraphrased as saying, "Would love it if you'd take that one line out. It's really going to make our life hard over here." The Wade Wilson actor and "Deadpool & Wolverine" co-wrier and producer said that he initially felt more protective over the line after that conversation, but "as soon as the fog of war [lifted]" he realized this wasn't a hill he needed to die on. The change clearly didn't harm the movie either, as it made well over a billion dollars at the box office.

"Of course I can take that out. Can I say something about Pinocchio instead?" Reynolds recalled asking the powers-that-be. He got the okay, and as Levy told EW, the objectionable line "was replaced with an equally dirty line of dialogue about Pinocchio shoving his face up Deadpool's butt and starting to lie like crazy." Of course it was.

"Deadpool & Wolverine" is now available to stream on Disney+ (minus the joke about Mickey Mouse's genitals).