Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images for Cannes Lions
Ryan Reynolds cast doubt on the long-awaited ‘Free Guy’ sequel during a UK appearance on Saturday night.
Headlining the four-day Just For Laughs comedy festival at London’s O2 Arena, Reynolds appeared in conversation with his ‘Deadpool 2’ co-star Rob Delaney who asked if he was planning a sequel to one of the films he produced, which include “Free Guy”.
“There’s the potential to do a sequel to ‘Free Guy,’ which would be fun,” Reynolds replied. “I would love that. But also, does everything fucking have to be a sequel? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s good to make a movie and have it kick your ass, and then everyone goes home. House.
“So, you know, there’s a bit of push and pull there, resisting the urge to immediately go, ‘Ohh, doing a sequel will validate the first,'” Reynolds continued. “No, the first film validates the first and you can leave it at that. So I don’t know, we’re still talking about it.
During the extensive conversation, which covered Reynolds’ early life as a child actor as well as his investment in British football club Wrexham FC, his production company Maximum Effort and even his fourth child, who he recently Hosted alongside wife Blake Lively, Reynolds’ star in the much-talked-about 2011 film ‘Green Lantern’ was inevitably brought up. The film, which also starred Lively, Tim Robbins and Taika Waititi, suffered from “too much time, too much money,” Reynolds said.
“There were just too many people spending too much money and when there was a problem rather than saying, ‘Okay, let’s stop spending on special effects and think about the characters. How do we replace this big show stuff? — which doesn’t work at all — by something that’s character-based? and it never was — the thought was never there to do that,” he explained. “And to their credit, that’s a very old way of looking at it. It’s just, ‘Let’s keep going through this.’ And it was – it didn’t work. At the same time, there’s 185 people who worked on this movie, they all had an amazing time, we loved shooting it. Really, shooting the movie was a lot of fun . But, you know, sitting in that premiere, watching this, oh my God. It’s hard.”
Delaney replied, “So you’re watching this and I don’t want to put words in your mouth -“
“The words were ‘Holy Shit’ and ‘No. NO!'” Reynolds chimed in. When Delaney then asked if watching the premiere made Reynolds’ asshole “float”, the actor replied, “Oh my God , it was like a ukulele there. It was crazy. It was a weird feeling. It wasn’t a feeling I wanted to repeat. So I really spent the next few years owning as much as I could, it was the only way to deal with it.
During the Q&A portion of the fireside chat, Reynolds was also trolled by an audience member who said, “So singing, dancing, superhero movies, action, drama…. Hugh Jackson is just one of the greatest performers in movie history and I was wondering who he likes to work with.
Reynolds laughed and responded with an unusually warm description of Jackman, with whom he has a long-running fake feud (the duo are gearing up to begin filming “Deadpool 3” this summer, with Jackman reprising the role of Wolverine.) “Everyone is waiting for me to eviscerate Hugh Jackman, but I will say he was one of the first movie stars I worked with, back in 2007, on an absolute trash fire called ‘X-Men Origins Wolverine’ – that one was on him,” Reynolds said. “And what struck me about him was he was so nice. He was one of the first people I saw at that level that treated the caterer the same way as the director or the producer or the head of the studio. He just treated everyone the same. And you know that kind of impression spreads. And I think that Hugh Jackman is probably responsible for a lot of the best people working in the weird and wonderful world of the show business. So here is. Fuck this guy too.
Here are some other highlights from Reynolds’ speech:
On welcoming her fourth child with Blake Lively:
Our house is crazy. We are really excited. We called the child Cocaine Bear. Turns out it’s a movie that’s out right now. We are currently in litigation with them.
By teaming up with Nick Cannon to shoot a vasectomy-themed commercial for Reynolds’ Aviation Gin company in 2022:
I said (to Cannon) ‘Cheers. You know, I think I could use this drink, I have three kids,” and he goes, “I have eight.” But before we even released the ad, he had four more.
On filming a spot with David Beckham for “Deadpool 2”:
It was a giant mea culpa. There’s a scene in “Deadpool” where I’m sitting there with my roommate Blind Al. And she goes, “Appearance isn’t everything, Wade.” And I’m totally scarred and bald and I’ve got this whole scar made up. And I say, “Looks is everything. What, you think Ryan Reynolds has gone this far with his Stanislavski method? And then I say, ‘Have you ever heard David Beckham speak? It’s like he sexed with a can of helium in my mouth. And I felt so bad after that. And I remember reaching out to David, like, ‘I’d like to do something around this.’ where this little place was born, we did this little bit of fun. And now we’ve been friends ever since and he’s helped me a lot with Wrexham.
On who leaked the “Deadpool” test footage:
(The studio) let us shoot a bit of test footage, which they never released, and it sat on the shelf for two years, then one day some asshole accidentally leaked it to the internet . Who would do that? And the next thing I know the internet says they want this movie. (The screen behind Reynolds plays a snippet of the test footage) These are the actual test images. I haven’t seen this since he left my computer.