Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy revealed during a recent interview that their upcoming film, Deadpool & Wolverine, which also stars Hugh Jackman, almost had Mephisto as its main antagonist. The immortal demonic entity previously appeared in the 2007 film Ghost Rider and its 2012 sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and could have been the primary antagonist in Deadpool & Wolverine if the filmmakers had decided to keep one of the early versions of the story.

According to Reynolds and Levy, Mephisto as a villain in Deadpool 3 was one of the ideas they "flirted" with in the early stages of the film's development. However, things changed after Jackman came on board.

"We went through a lot of 'almost' versions of this story before we landed," Levy told Collider. "Honestly, it was the infamous phone call from Hugh, but then it was this idea of Cassandra Nova as a sibling to Charles, because Cassandra's connection to Professor X creates an interesting dynamic and fascination in Cassandra over you [for Jackman]," he added.

According to Levy, Jackman reached out when he and Reynolds were planning to call Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige about delaying Deadpool 3. Before that, they had "hitches and starts," but were struggling to come up with a story that was "original and not derivative" of the previous two films, the director told Vanity Fair.