For those of you who don’t know, yesterday, July 28th, marked the four-year “Leak-iversery” of the Deadpool test footage, and, evidently, hell hath no fury like Ryan Reynolds.
Having taken the motion picture adaptation of the Merc with a Mouth fundamentally upon himself following the abhorrent debut of the foul-mouthed mercenary in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Reynolds was only able to coerce 20th Century Fox into playing ball after some test footage – which director Tim Miller was given “a low-six-figure budget” to produce – “accidentally leaked” online in July of 2014.
After all this time, though, you’d think that Ryan would let bygones be bygones, especially when you consider that during the interim, the Deadpool franchise has grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide. Well, apparently not.
With the release of Deadpool 2: The Super Duper Cut on the horizon, Reynolds took to Twitter not only to blast the individual responsible for the leak, but also to let fans know that he’s now taken over the investigation himself.
“It’s the 4 year Leak-iversery,” tweeted the actor. “UPDATE: Still searching for the bastard who leaked our test footage onto the internet causing Deadpool to receive a green light. Taking over the investigation myself. #Angry.”
Of course, Reynolds is clearly joking here. After all, following the success of Deadpool, the actor founded the production company Maximum Effort, which went on to produce this May’s sequel and now, the adult-themed reboot of Home Alone – Stoned Alone. So, to say that the leaked footage altered the trajectory of his career for the better would be a massive understatement.
I mean, had it not been for the overwhelming fan response, the Merc with a Mouth would’ve been DOA, and even though we might not be getting a threequel anytime soon, two out of three ain’t bad, right?