Hollywood hunk
Ryan Reynolds sure has a lot of balls to juggle at the moment. Along with Green Lantern press tours (obviously his biggest movie to date) and video game voice-over work, he's also currently shooting the thriller
Safe House alongside Denzel Washington, with filming for Universal's adaptation of Dark Horse's dark comedy actioner
R.I.P.D. starring Zach Galifianakis starting shortly thereafter. The wealth of commitments Reynolds is currently engaged with has lead many to suspect that the purported X-Men spin-off screen outing for Marvel anti-hero
Deadpool is dead in the water. Especially
with talk last summer of Warner Bros. plans to put a Green Lantern sequel quickly into production if the film performs as it should at the box office this year.
Empire caught up with Reynolds this week, where he still insisted that a Deadpool spin-off film was "still in the works" and that he wants it to happen, although he was "not sure how logistically it works in terms of scheduling." Not the most concrete of information, but at the moment it's the best we are going to get. Last year, Deadpool was shaping up to shoot this year under the direction from
Robert Rodriguez based on a screenplay by
Rhett Reese and
Paul Wernick but when Rodriguez decided to make Spy Kids 4 instead, the film was indefinitely put on hold.
When questioned about The Green Lantern, which is due to open June 17th, Reynolds was decidedly more vocal. One topic brought up was the fans issue regarding Lantern alter-ego Hal Jordan's CGI costume which was met with an agreeable answer, with Reynolds explaining the ruling out of spandex in the film;
"It has to be virtual rather than spandex, says Reynolds, wearing his grey sensor suit. This is a suit from an alien planet. Its not The Dark Knight I dont put the suit on and my voice drops several octaves, adds Reynolds, unfazed by the absence of green tights. The suit is powered specifically on his will, his emotion, his creativity and his imagination. I love that. Everything Hal creates are images from his childhood, he goes on. Or things fuelled specifically from his own mind.
This still doesn't address the issue of the CGI featured in the trailer looking particularly unimpressive, with the visual motif appearing to be 'fluorescent green vomit' rather than 'comic-book cool'. It remains to be seen whether this polarising art direction will make sense when put into context with the full-length feature. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPcD9iX5huk Empire also asked him whether there were any issues with portraying both The Green Lantern
and Deadpool, to which Reynolds replied;
"Those two universes are completely different.Superhero movies are so pervasive in pop culture, I dont look at the as superhero roles as much as just roles. Theyre such different people. Deadpool is about a guy in a highly militarised shame spiral, Green Lantern is more universally themed."
I can't help but feel a little bit of bitterness towards The Green Lantern flick, when it is so clearly standing in the way of an altogether more exciting project in the fourth-wall breaking, cult-favourite Deadpool. What we have heard & seen thus far regarding Warner Bros. adaptation of the DC icon has been underwhelming, and with Ryan Reynold's charismatic and cocksure on-screen persona seemingly destined to don that red mask, this long wait for it to reach cinema's is almost unbearable.