Ryan Reynolds had a dopey plan to secretly release Deadpool & Wolverine
If Reynolds had had his way, audiences wouldn't have known they were watching Deadpool & Wolverine until 10 minutes into "Alpha Cop"
Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images for Disney
In a universe where almost every superhero movie now gets compressed, in the span of just a couple of weeks, down to little more than its various teasers, stingers, cameos, and other franchise obligations, the spoiler has become a matter of million or billion-dollar interest. Having your big, flashy reveal get leaked can be disastrous for a new comic-based movie, with Marvel being notorious about trying to keep this kind of thing in check.
Even so, Ryan Reynolds’ original idea for keeping Deadpool & Wolverine under wraps might have been a bit extreme, bordering on outright dopey. During his recent stint on Hot Ones with co-star Hugh Jackman, the Mint Mobile owner (who also acts) revealed that he’d come up with an elaborate plan to film and then release the movie in secret, with audiences only finding out they were watching a third ‘pool movie when the logo for “Alpha Cop” suddenly transformed.
Real quick: We want you to imagine Kevin Feige’s face while Reynolds tries to sell him on launching a $200 million franchise tentpole with zero marketing and, in fact, a deliberate disinformation campaign aimed at fans. Fun, right?
Anyway, Reynolds went so far as to whip up a poster for “Alpha Cop,” which would apparently have been about “two guys that were sharing one brain and together they make the perfect cop.” He even cooked up a tagline for it: “Two cops, one brain, all balls.” The movie would have been “intentionally bad,” according to Reynolds, which is always an interesting gamble when your actual movie is about to face the jaundiced eye of critics. And, again, we’re returning to that image of Feige’s face. He’s smiling, because that guy’s always smiling, but the knuckles gripping his ever-prsent baseball cap are turning very white.
Anyway, Reynolds gave up on the plan because, “The problem is that if you managed to get down to the last minute and it got blown, it would just be heartbreaking.” (He also notes that, in his perfect world, “Like 10 people in America would go to see this movie on opening weekend,” and, whoops, imaginary Kevin just tore the brim right off his hat.) Meanwhile, the dreams of Alpha Cop will have to remain simply hypothetical, even if (we admit in a very quiet voice) we would probably watch Alpha Cop if it popped up on our Netflix queue at 9 o’clock at night.