“This could be punishable by law”: how doing “the wrong thing” saved Ryan Reynolds’ stagnant career

Posted On October 23, 2025October 23, 2025

While your mileage may vary on how exciting it is to see him play thinly-veiled extensions of himself in basically every movie he’s made for the last decade, what can’t be denied is that Ryan Reynolds is one of Hollywood’s savviest operators, and it’s got little to do with his filmography.

The actor, producer, and occasional screenwriter has plunged his fingers into a lot of pies, and all of them have been remarkably successful. He’s an A-list star, a gin magnate, a football team owner, the co-owner of a mobile phone network, and the founder of a production company and marketing agency that specialises in viral moments, so it’s clear he’s got a switched-on head sitting on his shoulders.

Still, the riskiest gambit he ever pulled turned out to be the smartest, because it single-handedly revived a career that wasn’t exactly trending upward beforehand. While he had a few hits to his name, Reynolds remained on the hunt for that breakthrough film or performance that would elevate him to the next level, and it didn’t look like it was coming along any time soon.

Ironically, it all began with his highest-grossing release at the time, which was also a movie he was blackmailed into making. He’d been wanting to adapt Deadpool for the big screen since 2004, and five years later, he was cast in X-Men Origins: Wolverine as the character, and he knew just as well as anyone who saw it that the superhero spinoff was utter cack.

He’d only agreed to take the part because the studio threatened to cast someone else if he didn’t, which wouldn’t put the kibosh on his hopes for a solo spinoff. The Proposal gave him the back-to-back top earners of his career in the same year, but things started to gradually slide downhill for the next half a decade.

Paper Man was panned, Green Lantern was one of the biggest flops in history, The Change-Up was slated, Safe House underperformed for a Denzel Washington action thriller, RIPD was another colossal money loser, The Voices tanked, The Captive barely saw the inside of a cinema, Mississippi Grind flopped, Self/less was shite, and Criminal was criminal, with the underrated Buried one of the rare bright spots.

His only real money-makers in that period were voice-only roles in The Croods and Turbo, with Deadpool placed on the back burner. At least, that was the case until somebody mysteriously leaked test footage online in July 2014 that had been crafted two years earlier, and the response was so enthusiastic that 20th Century Fox caved and awarded Reynolds’ passion project the green light and a release date weeks later.

Nobody took credit or responsibility for the leak until September 2025, when Reynolds finally confirmed what most people had already assumed: it was him all along. “Yes, I cheated a little, but I think I was onto something that people would be interested in,” he said. “And I’m grateful that I listened to that instinct, and I’m grateful that I did the wrong thing in that moment.”

“Some asshole leaks it online and I’m like, looking at the guy in the mirror brushing my teeth,” he explained. “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.”

In the end, he made the right call. Yes, he ran the risk of legal action, but it’s funny how those things will quickly be forgotten when there’s money to be made. All three entries in the Deadpool franchise became the highest-grossing R-rated releases in cinema history, earning almost $3 billion combined, breathed new life into Reynolds’ stagnant career, and became the catalyst for his ascension to the Hollywood summit.

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