The following contains spoilers for Deadpool 2. You have been warned.
Deadpool 2 brings a number of popular X-Men characters to the big screen for the first time, but one major name was originally going to have a much larger part than what ended up on screen. Jack Kesy plays the popular X-Men villain Black Tom Cassidy in the new movie. He's only seen early in the film when Deadpool finds himself locked in the Icebox, but the writers of Deadpool 2 recently revealed that in an earlier version of the movie, Cassidy's part continued on from there, however, the film's budget basically only allowed for one major CGI bad guy, and they chose the other one. According to Rhett Reese...
We thought we were overstuffing the movie a little bit with too many antagonists, too many villains. And also budgetarily, it was very, very expensive, because his powers are to move organic material around --- the entire orphanage, and the trees, everything was flying around, and the hailstorms of wood --- it was really cool, but it was also really, really expensive, and we just thought, we prefer to throw that money to the CG of Juggernaut as opposed to Black Tom. So he got reduced --- and then killed, which I know a lot of people are probably going to be upset about, but we can always go back in time and make anybody alive, so perhaps he'll come back. Jack did a great job with the character in limited time. That was Black Tom's role, and it did reduce a little bit, unfortunately.
Originally, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick reveal to Comicbook.com, Black Tom was going to act as a devil on the shoulder of Firefist, pushing him to turn bad. However, it was apparently decided that Black Tom's mutant powers were going to be expensive to create, and instead the decision was made to focus on Juggernaut rather than Black Tom. Juggernaut ends up playing much that same role in the final version of Deadpool 2.
It's interesting to learn that Black Tom Cassidy was originally going to have a much larger role because this was the character that had been rumored to have been cut entirely from the film before it was released. While it turned out Black Tom wasn't cut out, the fact that the part was so greatly reduced was probably where the rumor got started in the first place.
I'm certainly glad Black Tom wasn't cut, as he was a solid target for Deadpool jokes while he was on screen. While it sounds like the part was cut down early in the process, if there's any of this additional footage around, hopefully, it will make some future DVD release and we can see some of what could have been.
