Deadpool writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese are making a movie about New Coke

By Sam Barsanti | April 28, 2015 | 2:17am

Aux Features Film

After working on the Deadpool movie, writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese are now moving onto another aggressively cool creation that—unlike Deadpool—never managed to actually convince anyone that it was as cool as it claimed to be: New Coke. That comes from Deadline, which reports that Wernick and Reese used their own money to pick up the rights to Thomas Oliver’s book The Real Coke, The Real Story, which covers the history of Coca-Cola and its decision to throw out everything it had been doing for decades and introduce a new/terrible version of its beloved soda formula. New Coke ended up being a huge flop, everybody freaked out, the company re-introduced the classic formula, and then we all lived happily ever after. Presumably, Wernick and Reese will make the story more exciting than that.

Now, let’s talk about a dream cast. Who should play Coca-Cola inventor John Pemberton? He died 100 years before New Coke was introduced, but he’ll probably show up as a ghost or something. He has a bit of a Leonardo DiCaprio thing going on in his Wikipedia picture, but they could settle for Val Kilmer if the budget isn’t high enough for him.