Deadpool has become one of the biggest comic book movie franchises around and it's all thanks to some leaked test footage. Over the weekend was the four year anniversary of the leak of that footage, and Ryan Reynolds took the opportunity to announce that, since the person responsible for the leak has never been caught, he will be taking over the search. No word if Reynolds will be checking nearby mirrors for suspects.
Ryan Reynolds seems awfully upset that his passion project finally got off the ground after somebody leaked the test footage he shot in an attempt to get Fox to greenlight the project. Initially, the studio passed on Deadpool but after the test footage hit the internet and fans went crazy for it, the studio took another look and decided to let the movie go forward. Not only was the film one of the highest grossing R-rated movies of all time, but it spawned a sequel that became a hit in its own right.
I'm not saying that Ryan Reynolds is absolutely the guilty party when it comes to the leak, but he is without question one of the prime suspects. It's also a fairly safe bet that even if Ryan Reynolds wasn't the one who leaked the footage, he knows who did, and yet, I don't expect that he'll be turning in the guilty party anytime soon.
More likely, he'll be buying that person a beer, because he owes them quite a lot. We simply would never have seen a Ryan Reynolds Deadpool movie, and likely would never have seen a Deadpool movie of any kind, without the leak. Whoever leaked the footage was counting on building a groundswell of support from fans and was certain that the fans would love what they saw and so took the chance by sending the footage out there.
Of course, if the footage hadn't resulted in the desired effect, it seems the leaker would have been ok as their identity has never been revealed. Reynolds and Deadpool director Tim Miller are the two major suspects, though it may have also been the screenwriters Rhett Reese or Paul Wernick. Nobody has spilled the beans about which one actually did it.
It's sort of amazing that in the four years since the leak we got not one but two Deadpool films, with an X-Force movie currently in the writing stages. At this point, it's the only part of Fox's Marvel empire that seems to be firing on all cylinders, which means it's the only part that people are confident Disney might keep around once they take control of the X-Men universe once again.
Although, with Fox now having officially begun its merger with Disney, perhaps the guilty party will finally be willing to confess once Fox ceases to exist and nobody there can punish the person who did it.
