Ryan Reynolds Admits He Leaked The Deadpool Test Footage

Posted in: 20th Century Studios, Movies | Tagged: deadpool, ryan reynolds

After many years of skirting around the issue, Ryan Reynolds finally admitted that he leaked the Deadpool test footage in 2014.

Article Summary
Ryan Reynolds confirms he leaked the 2014 Deadpool test footage, ending years of fan speculation and rumors.
The leak pushed 20th Century Fox to greenlight Deadpool after studio reluctance toward the R-rated character.
Reynolds reflects on Deadpool’s difficult journey from X-Men Origins appearance to box office success in 2016.
Deadpool’s success highlights the impact of online fan support and the legacy of earlier R-rated comic films like Blade.

Deadpool had quite the journey to the big screen. Ryan Reynolds appeared as a terrible version of the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but his scenes earlier in the movie did seem to resonate with fans. It also resonated with Reynolds, but the film got leaked [irony], which really cut into the box office profits. The X-Men franchise would officially go quiet for two years until X-Men: First Class. While the timeline was nebulous, it did seem like there could be a place for Reynolds as Deadpool on the big screen, but it just wasn’t happening. Speaking at the Toronto International Film Festival (via Entertainment Weekly), Reynolds knew there was potential here and was grateful he trusted his instincts to do the ‘wrong thing.’

“Yes, I cheated a little, but I think I was onto something that people would be interested in,” Reynolds said. “And I’m grateful that I listened to that instinct, and I’m grateful that I did the wrong thing in that moment.”

L-R: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JULY 22: Ryan Reynolds attends the Deadpool & Wolverine World Premiere at the David H. Koch Theater on July 22, 2024, in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Disney) 2024 Getty Images | Deadpool Poster. Photo © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

That wrong thing changed the trajectory of one of Marvel’s more bizarre characters. There was a little movement and interest, but nothing substantial, until July 2014, when test footage of Reynolds as Deadpool was leaked online. Reynolds explained that the test footage was shot “a couple of years before” and admits that the character isn’t exactly the easiest sell to the layman.

“I’d shot test footage for it a couple years before, and the studio just didn’t want anything to do with it,” he said. “And Deadpool’s a fringe character. 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.”

There have been rumors and accusations about who exactly leaked the footage. Reynolds always played it off in a very in-character way, but at TIFF, more than a decade later, Reynolds decided to stop skirting around the issue and admit that he was the one who leaked that test footage.

“Some a–hole leaks it online and I’m like, you know, looking at the guy in the mirror brushing my teeth,” he said, finally taking credit for the leak for the first time. “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.”

The irony of the entire thing, aside from the fact that Deadpool went on to be a commercial and critical smash hit and found an audience with true-blue comic fans and laymen alike, was the fact that the R-rating and the content seemed to be one of the big sticking points for everyone involved. It’s a perfect example of how quickly you can forget your own history, doubly so when said history means giving the credit to a man of color. Blade was an R-rated comic book movie that came out just fourteen months after everyone said comic book movies were dead because of Batman & Robin. 

The success of Blade in 1998, X-Men in 1999, and Spider-Man in 2002 were the 1-2-3 punch that kicked off the superhero boom, So whenever you hear someone saying they couldn’t do this comic book movie because it was R-rated, remind them that we are standing on the foundation built by Blade, the sequel which was also pretty damn good, and that third film we’re not going to talk about. Would Deadpool have done well in a pre-Avengers and MCU world? Hard to tell, the character remains niche despite the mainstream success in film, and the journey the character and film took to make it to the big screen was a definitive example of how much power the audience actually has.

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