Ryan Reynolds Casts Doubt on ‘Free Guy’ Sequel, Says ‘Green Lantern’ Suffered From ‘Too Much Time, Too Much Money’

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Ryan Reynolds Casts Doubt on ‘Free Guy’ Sequel, Says ‘Green Lantern’ Suffered From ‘Too Much Time, Too Much Money’

Ryan Reynolds cast doubt on the long-hoped for “Free Guy” sequel during an appearance in the U.K. on Saturday evening.

Headlining the four-day Just For Laughs comedy festival at the O2 Arena in London, Reynolds appeared in conversation with his “Deadpool 2” co-star Rob Delaney who asked whether he was planning a sequel to any of the films he has produced, which include “Free Guy.”

“There is the potential to do a sequel to ‘Free Guy,’ which would be fun,” Reynolds replied. “I would love it. But also like, does everything fucking have to be a sequel? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s OK to just do a movie and have it kick ass and then everyone go home.”

“So you know, there’s a bit of a push and pull there, resisting the urge to just immediately say, ‘Ohh, doing a sequel will validate the first one,’” Reynolds continued. “No, the first movie validates the first one and then you can leave it at that. So I don’t know, we’re still talking about it.”

During the wide-ranging talk, which covered Reynolds’ beginnings as a child actor up as well as his investment in British football club Wrexham F.C., his production company Maximum Effort and even his fourth child, whom he recently welcomed alongside wife Blake Lively, Reynolds’ role in the widely-panned 2011 film “Green Lantern” inevitably came up. The movie, which also starred Lively, Tim Robbins and Taika Waititi, suffered from “Too much time, too much money,” Reynolds said.

“There was just too many people spending too much money and when there was a problem rather than say, ‘Okay, let’s stop spending on special effects and let’s think about character. How do we replace this big spectacle thing – that isn’t working at all – with something that’s character based?’ and that 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 spending our way through this.’ And that was – it didn’t work. At the same time, there are 185 people that worked on that movie, they all had an amazing time, we loved shooting it. Truly, shooting the movie was a lot of fun. But, you know, sitting in that premiere, watching that, oh my God. It’s tough.”

Delaney replied: “So you’re watching that and I don’t want to put words in your mouth – ”

“The words were ‘Holy Shit’ and ‘No. NO!’” Reynolds interjected. When Delaney then asked whether watching the premiere had made Reynolds’ “butthole flutter,” the actor replied: “Oh my God it was like a ukelele down there. It was crazy. It was an odd feeling. It was not a feeling I wanted to repeat. So I really spent the following years just owning as much as I could, it was the only way to kind of process 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 cinematic history and I was wondering what he’s like 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 preparing to start shooting “Deadpool 3” this summer, with Jackman reprising the role of Wolverine.) “Everyone’s expecting me to eviscerate Hugh Jackman but I will say he was one of the first movie stars I ever worked with, back in 2007, on an absolute trash fire called ‘X-Men Origins Wolverine’ – that one was on him,” said Reynolds. “And what struck me about him was just he was so kind. He was one of the first people I watched 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 Hugh Jackman is probably responsible for a lot of better people who work in the weird and wonderful world of showbusiness. So yeah. Also fuck that guy.”

Here are a few more highlights from Reynolds’ talk:

On welcoming his fourth child with Blake Lively:

Our home is insane. We’re really excited. We named the child Cocaine Bear. Which it turns out is a film that’s out right now. We’re in litigation right now with them.

On 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 says ‘I have eight.’ But before we even released the commercial, he’d had like four more.

On shooting a spot with David Beckham for “Deadpool 2”:

That was a giant mea culpa. There’s a scene in “Deadpool” where I’m sitting there with my roommate Blind Al. And she says, “Looks aren’t everything, Wade.” And I’m totally scarred and bald and got all this scar make up on. And I say “Looks are everything. What, do you think Ryan Reynolds got this far on his Stanislavski method?” And then I say, “Have you ever heard David Beckham speak? It’s like he mouth sexed a can of helium.” And I felt so fucking bad about that afterwards. And I remember reaching out to David, like, “I would love to do something around this.” And so that’s where that little spot was born, we did this fun little bit. And now we’ve been buddies ever since and he’s helped me a lot with Wrexham.

On who leaked the “Deadpool” test footage:

[The studio] allowed us to shoot a little bit of test footage, which they never released, and it sat on the shelf for two years and then one day some asshole accidentally leaked it onto the internet. Who would do that? And the next thing I know the Internet is saying they want this movie. [Screen behind Reynolds plays a clip of the test footage] That is the actual test footage. I have not seen that since it left my computer.