If Michael Caine won't take a break, then Ryan Reynolds will

This weekend, Michael Caine announced that he is retiring from acting, revealing that his most recent film, Best Sellers, will be his final acting role. Then, a few hours and probably a few panicked phone calls later, Michael Caine’s representatives announced that, no, he’s not retiring, and nobody has any idea what anyone is talking about. He’s just a very old man who has been working for many, many years, why would he retire?

Anyway, with Caine now free to continue being in as many movies as possible, another guy who is in as many movies as possible might as well take a break in his place, which we assume is why Ryan Reynolds decided to announced this weekend that he’s taking “a little sabbatical from movie making.”

Reynolds made the announcement on his Instagram as part of a celebratory announcement about the end of filming on his upcoming Will Ferrell-Octavia Spencer holiday movie Spirited. He doesn’t offer any other details about why he’s doing this sabbatical or how long it will go for, but at some point Kevin Feige is going to break the glass on the Deadpool phone that he got when Disney bought 20th Century Fox and make The Call.

No matter why he’s taking this sabbatical, there’s no way in hell that Reynolds is going to turn down the chance to do some kind of MCU-sanctioned Deadpool’s Secret Wars movie or whatever with Hugh Jackman as The Beyonder. He’d make that tomorrow if somebody gave him the okay.

Now, in a gesture toward journalistic integrity, we have to point out that we are aware that Blake Lively did make a Michael Caine joke in the comments of Reynolds’ Instagram post, so she very much beat us to it. We would point out that we thought of Michael Caine when we saw the headline on Variety’s article about Ryan Reynolds, so it’s more of a parallel-thinking thing than a “we’re stealing Blake Lively’s jokes” thing, but we would understand if this has shaken your confidence in The A.V. Club.