Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman Join Long List of ‘Doomsday’ Writers

Y’all, nights are absolute hell for me right now. I came out of surgery last month with about 40 pounds’ worth of extra fluid in my body, so I have to take a pill that makes me pee once, twice, and sometimes even three times an hour throughout the night to offload it. I’ll occasionally get an uninterrupted hour or two, but those are few and far between. Couple that with the fact that one of my kids generously gave me his cold this week, and you’ve got restlessness that would make a man feel insane.

Here’s the other thing: I’m not smoking weed anymore. I still have some gummies to help with sleep (until those are pulled from shelves next month), but that’s nothing compared to smoking two or three bowls before bedtime and drifting off to a wonderfully dreamless sleep like I’m used to. Now, I’m at the mercy of whatever my dumb, nerdy brain decides to focus on. Last night, that was Avengers: Doomsday. I know! There are so many other things to focus on, but dammit, I was not in control.

All night, I was tossing, turning, and peeing, thinking about the various rumors surrounding the MCU’s latest event film. Don’t get me wrong, I am excited about the film, and I’m not afraid to admit it, but even I was starting to get annoyed with myself when the clock struck 4:30 AM. I was up for the umpteenth time, and all I could think about was whether Doctor Strange was actually going to assist Doctor Doom in his universe-ending conquest!

In fact, given how guarded Kevin Feige and crew have been about the upcoming movie, playing around in the rumor mill has actually been a lot of fun. That said, if you’d rather go into the film without a single idea of what’s possible, turn back now, because it seems the WGA may have just confirmed one of the biggest rumors out there (at least slightly).

Still with me? Okay. One of the most persistent rumors I’ve seen out there is that Doomsday will start with Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man battling Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. The movie will deal with incursions, where two universes begin occupying the same space with deadly results. Either both universes are destroyed in the calamity, or one dies so the other can live. Allegedly, Deadpool and Wolverine find themselves in the Tobey-verse at the behest of the X-Men, ready to blow it up to save their own (an idea ripped right from the comics, albeit not with the same characters).

Now, are you still with me?! While that may sound like some nerdy wet dream designed specifically to keep someone like me up at night between urinations, there may be some wrinkle of truth to it. Jackman and Reynolds have not been featured in any trailers for the film (yet); they teased their involvement at D23 this year. So, we know they’ll be involved in some capacity, but it may be more significant than expected. While Stephen McFeely and Michael Waldron will be credited as writers of the new film, Reynolds and Jackman are both receiving credit for “additional literary material” with several other scribes who have worked on other MCU projects.

What this means for the movie remains to be seen, but it could point toward the duo having a bigger role than the trailers may have let on so far. After all, the marketing has been pretty heavy on the X-Men connections, including Channing Tatum’s Gambit, who has only appeared in Deapool Ampersand Wolverine so far. Those titular characters joining the fray in a more significant way does make sense. Could that only amount to them in a battle with another character who got famous outside of the MCU, like someone dumping their action figures on the floor and seeing who’s left standing by the end? That question is likely to keep me up tonight as well.