Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images for Cannes Lions
Ryan Reynolds cast doubt on the long-awaited ‘Free Guy’ sequel during an appearance in the UK on Saturday night.
While headlining the four-day Just For Laughs comedy festival at London’s O2 arena, Reynolds chatted with his Deadpool 2 co-star Rob Delaney, who asked if he’s planning a sequel to any of the films he’s produced. includes “Free Guy”.
“It’s possible to make a sequel to Free Guy, which would be fun,” Reynolds replied. “I’d love to. But also, does everything fucking have to be a sequel? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s okay to just make a movie and have it pop and then everyone goes home.”
“So, you know, there’s a bit of a push and pull, resisting the urge to immediately say, ‘Oh, making a sequel validates the first,'” Reynolds continued. “No, the first movie validates the first, and then you can leave it at that. So I don’t know, we’re still talking about it.”
During a wide-ranging conversation that covered Reynolds’ beginnings as a child actor as well as his investment in British soccer club Wrexham FC, his production company Maximum Effort and even his fourth child, which he recently welcomed with wife Blake Lively, Reynolds. A role in the widely panned 2011 film “Green Lantern” inevitably came up. The film, which also starred Lively, Tim Robbins and Taika Waititi, suffered from “Too much time, too much money,” Reynolds said.
“Too many people spent too much money and when there was a problem, instead of saying, ‘Okay, let’s stop spending on special effects and think about the character. How can we replace this grand spectacle—which doesn’t work at all—with something character-based? and that it just never—the thinking was never there to do that,” he explained. “And to their credit, it’s a very old-school way of looking at things. It’s just, “Let’s just keep grinding through this.” And it was—it didn’t work. At the same time there were 185 people working on the film, they all had an amazing time, we loved shooting it. Shooting the movie was really fun. But you know, I’m sitting at that premiere watching it, oh my god. It is tough.”
Delaney replied, “So you’re looking at it, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth—”
“The words were ‘Holy shit’ and ‘No. NO!’” Reynolds interrupted. When Delaney then asked if watching the premiere had made Reynolds’ “butt flutter,” the actor replied, “Oh my God, there was like a ukelele. It was crazy. It was a strange feeling. It wasn’t a feeling I wanted to repeat. So I spent the next few years just owning as much as I could, that 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: “Singing, dancing, superhero movies, action, drama…. Hugh Jackson is just one of the greatest performers in film history and I wonder what it’s like to work with him.
Reynolds laughed and responded with an uncharacteristically warm description of Jackman, with whom he has a long-standing feud (the duo is preparing to begin shooting “Deadpool 3” this summer, in which Jackman will play Wolverine.) “Everybody’s waiting for me to gut Hugh Jackman, but I’ll say he was one of the first movie stars I ever worked with, in 2007, in an absolute garbage fire called ‘X-Men Origins Wolverine’ — it was on him,” said Reynolds. “And what struck me about him was that he was so kind. He was one of the first people I saw at that level who treated a caterer the same as a director, producer or studio head. He just treated everyone the same. And you know that kind of impression spreads. And I think Hugh Jackman is probably responsible for a lot of the better people working in the weird and wonderful world of show business. So yes. Fuck that guy too.”
Here are a few more highlights from Reynolds’ speech:
On welcoming her fourth child with Blake Lively:
Our house is crazy. We are really excited. We named the child Cocaine Bear. Which turns out to be a movie showing right now. We are currently in litigation with them.
Working with Nick Cannon to shoot a vasectomy-themed ad for Reynolds’ Aviation Gin in 2022:
I said (to Cannon) ‘Cheers. You know, I think I could use this drink, I have three kids,” and he says, “I have eight.” But before we even ran the ad, he had four more.
On filming with David Beckham in the movie “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 he says, “Looks aren’t everything, Wade.” And I’m all scarred and bald and I’ve got all this scar makeup. And I’m like, “Looks are everything. What, you think Ryan Reynolds got this far with his Stanislavski method? And then I’m like, “Have you ever heard David Beckham speak? It’s like she’s sexy in the mouth of a can of helium.” And I was so damn sick after that. And I remember contacting David, “I’d like to do something about this.” And that’s how that little spot came about, we did this fun little bit. And now we’ve been mates ever since and he’s helped me a lot with Wrexham.
On the leak of ‘Deadpool’ test footage:
(The studio) allowed us to shoot a little bit of test footage that they never released and it sat on a shelf for two years and then one day some asshole accidentally leaked it to the internet. Who would do that? And the next thing I know on the internet, they want this movie. (The screen behind Reynolds plays a clip of the test footage) This is the actual test material. I haven’t seen it since it left my computer.