Ryan Reynolds has become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood following success with the Deadpool movies and his very public "feud" with Hugh Jackman. His latest film Free Guy is setting pandemic era box office records, showing that a lot of people love his movies so much they'll go to the theater to see them even now. One person who apparently isn't a big Ryan Reynolds fan is fellow actor Gerard Butler, but Reynolds doesn't mind, and he's used the publicity he's getting from this piece of news for good causes.
In a recent interview Gerard Butler, star of the new movie Copshop, was asked about the Ryan Reynolds film Free Guy, specifically because its mixture of game world and reality was similar, in concept to a previous film of his: 2009's Gamer. Butler had no real comment on the similarities between the two films because, according to him, he had no idea what Free Guy even was, as he apparently does not watch Ryan Reynolds films.
Now, one might expect that, upon seeing this news, Ryan Reynolds would probably make a snarky comment for a laugh, that's sort of what the man does. However, in this case, that's not what has happened. Reynolds has been using the publicity generated by these comments to raise money for the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He posted a comment on People's FB post and in his own Instagram post he admitted he was using the SEO juice from the story to generate donations.
As somebody who knows a little bit about search optimization, I have to hand it to Ryan Reynolds. He knows that there will be people who, upon hearing about this, might search his name and Gerard Butler's in order to get new details about this new Hollywood "beef." And so he makes sure that in the places where people will find that information, they'll also find him asking people to donate to charitable causes. Any money that this generates will be more than the organizations had before, and since Reynolds and Blake Lively are matching donations, it means even more money.
Because honestly, while it might be interesting to big fans of one actor or the other that Gerard Butler doesn't watch Ryan Reynolds movies, it's not like it matters that much. While Ryan Reynolds has a lot of fans there are probably a lot of people who don't watch his movies. This could maybe turn into another purely humorous feud like the one Reynolds has with Hugh Jackman, but beyond that I'm not sure people re going to get too worked up about it.
And ultimately it works as a Ryan Reynolds response because, while the main focus is raising money for charity, it's also pretty funny that this would be how Reynolds' would choose to respond. His focus on raising money will get noticed and it will almost certainly get his charity push in front of eyes that might not otherwise see it. What a class act.
