Ryan Reynolds, Tim Miller, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.
For more than a decade, these four names have made up a suspect list of who was responsible for leaking the 2014 “Deadpool” footage — a move credited with saving the superhero comedy franchise. Now, Reynolds has finally admitted who the guilty party was.
The answer’s not all that surprising.
“Yes, I cheated a little, but I think I was onto something that people would be interested in,” Reynolds said during a Q&A at Toronto International Film Festival on Friday. “I’m grateful that I listened to that instinct, and I’m grateful that I did the wrong thing in that moment.”
Reynolds attended TIFF alongside the festival’s opening film, “John Candy: I Like Me.” The movie star produced this documentary, which was directed by Colin Hanks. At TIFF 50, Reynolds also took part in the festival’s In Conversation With… series, speaking with TIFF Chief Programming Officer Anita Lee before a crowd.
“Some a–hole leaks it online and I’m like, you know, looking at the guy in the mirror brushing my teeth,” Reynolds said of the infamous test footage. “And I’m like, ‘Dude, what have you done? This could be punishable by law!’ But the internet forced the studio to say, ‘We’re gonna make this movie,’ and 24 hours later, that movie had a green light.”
When Reynolds came to Fox with his idea for a Deadpool movie, it took them a while to get on board. It’s hard to remember a time when the character wasn’t part of the superhero franchise fabric. The potty-mouthed, hyper violent mercenary now leads a highly successful film series, one with a third entry that grossed more than $1 billion.
But before “Deadpool” released in 2016, it sat for years in limbo. Once the core team had been assembled — Reynolds as the frontman, Miller the director, Reese and Wernick as the writers — Fox asked the group to produce test footage, showing what the promised R-rated superhero film could become. What emerged was an animated segment, voiced by Reynolds, resembling an action sequence that would eventually make it into the film — one where Deadpool jumps into a speeding car on the highway to dispatch with a series of goons.
Still, the studio was too gun-shy to move forward.
“Deadpool’s a fringe character,” Reynolds said at TIFF. “People didn’t really know who he was, and I loved him. I was obsessed with it because I loved that he knew he was in a comic book movie. It was kind of meta, it was kind of new. But the test footage existed, and it really was a case study of how this could work. And they just wouldn’t do anything with it.”
In July 2014, the test footage found its way onto the internet, an intentional leak meant to drive up online conversation. The gambit worked, and the footage met viral fervor. Fox gave the green light a day later, according to Reynolds.
“Deadpool” went on to make nearly $800 million, becoming the highest-grossing “X-Men” movie — and the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time until “Joker.”
“The problem was, this footage was owned by Fox and sort of illegal,” Reynolds told Jimmy Fallon ahead of the film’s release in 2016. “I know that one of us did it. There’s four of us — there’s me, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Tim Miller, the director. One of us did it. We all sort of said at the beginning ‘Someone should leak it, someone should leak it,’ so someone, the idea was planned, but I’m 70% sure it wasn’t me.”
Reynolds kept the legend of the leak alive for years, joking that he would investigate to find the true culprit of the move that forever changed his career. As recently as last year, he evaded the question, refusing to directly address it during a Vanity Fair Lie Detector Test with Hugh Jackman for “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
“This is a great question,” Reynolds said. “Pass.”
But three movies, billions of dollars and a Fox-Disney merger later, it’s probably safe to say no one will be hunting Reynolds down any time soon.
