Ryan Reynolds bogarts all the comic book movies, will likely star in Dark Horse adaptation R.I.P.D.

Hey male actors, did you want to play a comic-book character? Sorry, you can’t: Ryan Reynolds already called dibsies on all of them, including an upcoming adaptation of the Dark Horse title R.I.P.D. that’s being slated for shooting next summer, when Reynolds finally has a break from working on Green Lantern 2 (and hasn’t yet started developing Deadpool). For the unfamiliar, R.I.P.D. is a buddy cop story set in the afterlife, where two partners working for the Rest In Peace Department—one a recently murdered detective with an eye on vengeance, the other a grizzled old gunslinger—maintain law and order under the watchful eye of their supervisor God, who is millennia-too-old for this shit.

The adaptation was originally supposed to be headed up by McG, until he opted out to do the romantic comedy This Means War—and anyway, it sounds like McG found his substitute in the suspiciously similar Zombies Vs. Vampires. Now it looks as though R.I.P.D. will be helmed by Robert Schwentke, the director with the name that’s incredibly fun to say out loud and whose forthcoming, buzzed-about Red is drawn from a similarly violent comic source. Of course, the whole project apparently hinges upon Ryan Reynolds’ involvement, as his is the face by which the comic-book movie tides rise and fall.