Ryan Reynolds’ ongoing business partnership with Netflix—not to be confused with his ongoing business partnerships with Mint Mobile, gin, or Saving Teddy Bears, Inc.—continues apace this week, with Variety reporting that Reynolds has signed on to co-write and star a new comedy for the streaming service. Reynolds will work on the film, titled Upstate, with John August, with whom he previously collaborated on 2007's very weird, very existential The Nines.
Sadly, Reynolds has declined to clue us in on what Upstate might actually be about, which leaves us with nothing but blind speculation to go by here. Luckily, we love to blindly speculate: Given his track record of weirdness with August, upstate New York would be far too prosaic and obvious. Instead, let’s proffer up a guess that the movie will take place in a universe in which one state is floating over another—kind of like in that Kirsten Dunst movie Upside Down, except that, here, Reynolds is the only person capable of moving between the down and up states, making him that most fabled of figures: The Statewalker. Or, hey: Maybe it’s just a comedy that takes place in upstate New York.
Reynolds has been keeping busy lately, despite the pandemic; he’s got multiple movies—video game comedy Free Guy and action sequel The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard—currently hanging out in post-production, and plenty more projects (including that still largely hypothetical Dragon’s Lair adaptation for Netflix) in the works. All that, and he’s going to have to figure out how to get Wyoming hovering over Delaware—guy apparently loves to work.