How Green Lantern Nearly Destroyed Ryan Reynolds' Career, and How Deadpool Saved It

Green Lantern was supposed to launch Ryan Reynolds into the A list, but it nearly derailed his career instead. The character that rescued him was Deadpool, a role he refused to give up on through years of studio skepticism, creative meddling and being told the film would never happen.

Green Lantern arrived with a massive budget, a leading superhero role and the chance to cement Reynolds as a true blockbuster star. It was the kind of career defining opportunity actors dream of. Instead, it was panned by critics, mocked by fans and flopped at the box office. What followed was a rough stretch of box office bombs and fading studio confidence, and it looked like his shot at superstardom had come and gone. How he finally got Deadpool made is one of the greatest comebacks in Hollywood history.

A single comic book panel convinced Ryan Reynolds he was meant to play Deadpool

Reynolds first became interested in playing Deadpool after a New Line executive saw him in Blade: Trinity and thought he was a perfect fit for the Merc with the Mouth. The studio sent him a stack of comics, and the first panel he opened featured Deadpool describing his own looks by comparing himself to Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds took it as a sign. It felt like fate.

Unfortunately, the film fell apart at New Line because of rights issues with the character. Years later, while developing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Fox wanted to pack the film with more mutants and decided to include Deadpool. Reynolds, who had previously tried to develop a standalone Deadpool film at New Line, was the studio's top choice for the part.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine sealed Deadpool's mouth shut

Despite casting Reynolds, Fox made a series of baffling creative decisions. The character's nonstop banter and pop culture laced dialogue, one of his defining traits, was deemed too cheesy by the studio. Its solution was to seal his mouth shut. Fox also worried it would not be believable for Wade Wilson to have access to swords after escaping the lab, so the swords were surgically grafted onto his arms.

Reynolds was horrified. He thought the studio's take on the character completely missed the mark, but when he pushed back, Fox gave him an ultimatum: play Deadpool the studio's way or it would cast someone else. Feeling boxed in, he reluctantly agreed, knowing this was not the version of Deadpool he believed in.

Audiences were just as appalled. Fans of the character were furious, slamming the film for butchering everything that made Deadpool unique, especially turning him into a mute science experiment. After the film's release, the studio moved forward with developing a Deadpool spinoff that would completely disregard the Wolverine portrayal and instead return the character to his roots, much to Reynolds' relief.

Fox refused to commit to Deadpool, so Reynolds took Green Lantern

While the Deadpool spinoff was still stuck in development, Reynolds auditioned for Green Lantern and was offered the role, but his heart was set on playing Deadpool. Before accepting the part, he reached out to Fox and made one last appeal. If there was any real chance Deadpool would get made, he was willing to turn down Green Lantern in its favour.

Fox told him it had no plans to greenlight the project and doubted it would ever move forward. The studio was uneasy about the film's R rated tone, its constant fourth wall breaks and a lead character it felt was too unconventional and too risky for mainstream audiences. With that, Reynolds decided it was time to move on and accepted Green Lantern instead.

Green Lantern's fully CGI suit became a symbol of the film's missteps

What was meant to be a star making vehicle ended up doing serious damage to Reynolds' career. Green Lantern was met with critical backlash and underwhelming box office returns, and plans for the film to be the start of DC's new cinematic universe were ultimately scrapped.

One of the most ridiculed elements was the fully CGI suit. Because the suit comes from the ring and is a suit of energy, the filmmakers opted to make it entirely CGI, hoping it would appear otherworldly and visually distinct from the spandex and leather suits seen in other superhero films. Reynolds was initially hesitant, but the team believed it would emphasise that the suit is a manifestation of his power and allow him to change in and out of it easily within scenes. When the film was released, audiences and critics alike slammed the suit for looking artificial and just downright bad. What was meant to set Green Lantern apart visually instead came to symbolise its broader missteps.

The film was a VFX heavy production, with massive resources poured into visual spectacle, from the suit to the elaborate cosmic environments. Reynolds grew increasingly frustrated with how much emphasis was placed on effects over character. At one point, he suggested they just write a scene the way people would actually talk and make it a fun exchange of dialogue that does not cost anything, but those suggestions were ignored. He has since said the biggest lesson he took from Green Lantern was the importance of character over spectacle. In hindsight, even director Martin Campbell admitted, "I wish Reynolds had written the script. I think he would have done a great job," recognising that Reynolds had a better grasp of the tone the film needed.

A string of flops left Reynolds' leading man career in decline

The film's failure cast a shadow over Reynolds' leading man potential, and the projects that followed did little to help. With Green Lantern fresh in the industry's memory, he found it difficult to attract strong scripts or land roles in high quality projects. Studios were hesitant to take a gamble on him, and many of the opportunities that did come his way were either uninspired or poorly executed.

As a result, he ended up starring in a string of critical and commercial failures like R.I.P.D., The Change-Up and Turbo, and his career looked like it was in decline. All of this only strengthened his determination to bring Deadpool to life the right way. He refused to let the character's potential die with Wolverine, or to let his own career be defined by Green Lantern.

Tim Miller won over James Cameron and David Fincher, but The Avengers set Deadpool back

To direct the project, Fox hired Tim Miller, a visual effects veteran and founder of Blur Studio, best known for high end game trailers such as the cinematic for DC Universe Online, in which Lex Luthor and a team of villains take on the Justice League. Miller had also worked on acclaimed title sequences, including The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. With deep industry connections, he secured the support of two heavyweights and friends of his, James Cameron and David Fincher, who read the Deadpool script and personally championed it to Fox executives.

Still, progress was painfully slow. One of the lowest moments came when the team submitted the script to Fox the same day The Avengers hit theaters. That weekend, Marvel's ensemble film shattered box office records, and the Deadpool team assumed executives would see the appetite for superhero films and greenlight Deadpool by Monday. Instead, Fox came back with the opposite response. In light of The Avengers' success, it was now considering repackaging Deadpool as part of an ensemble rather than giving him his own R rated solo film. "It was a gut punch," Reynolds recalled.

In a last ditch effort to move the project forward, the team even crafted a PG-13 version of the script, hoping it would ease the studio's concerns and finally earn a green light. After reviewing it, though, Fox ultimately agreed that Deadpool simply did not work within the constraints of a traditional PG-13 rating.

A leaked Deadpool test reel finally forced Fox's hand

Eventually, Fox agreed to a small compromise, giving Miller a low six figure budget to produce a short test reel through Blur Studio. Made with CGI and with Reynolds voicing Deadpool, it captured everything fans loved about the character: his humor, his action and his fourth wall breaking attitude. Unfortunately, it failed to convince Fox to greenlight the film, and for a while it looked like Deadpool was dead in the water.

That changed when the test reel mysteriously leaked online in 2014. No one officially took credit, though Reynolds has openly joked that he might have provided an assist. Regardless of who was responsible, the impact was undeniable. It went viral almost immediately, with fans rallying around it and flooding social media with demands for the film to be made. The overwhelming response finally forced Fox to acknowledge what Reynolds had been saying for years: there was a massive underserved audience eager for a true Deadpool movie.

Not long after, longtime X-Men writer and producer Simon Kinberg joined the project. Internally, the team considered him the angel on their shoulders. His arrival gave the film credibility within the studio, and once he came aboard, everything kicked into high gear.

A last minute budget cut gave Deadpool his forgotten bag of guns

Even with the film going from delay after delay to full speed ahead, Fox was not done meddling. Just 48 hours before Deadpool was officially greenlit, the studio slashed the budget by 7 to 8 million. The sudden cut forced the creative team into a last minute rewrite, trimming roughly nine pages from the script.

Among the cuts were a major motorcycle chase originally planned for the climax of the 12 bullets fight and a large scale gunfight in the final act. To work around the lost action beats, the writers came up with a clever and now iconic solution. Deadpool would simply forget his bag of guns before the final battle, turning a budget constraint into a running joke that perfectly fit the film's irreverent tone.

Deadpool's success gave Reynolds the blueprint for Maximum Effort, Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile

When Deadpool finally hit theaters in 2016, it shattered expectations, breaking the record for the highest grossing R rated film at the box office. Soon after, Reynolds had a realization that would redefine his career. Instead of just being the face of someone else's brand, why not own the product he was promoting? He began investing in companies he believed in, brands where he could have a real stake and creative control.

To power this approach, he and a longtime collaborator launched Maximum Effort in 2018, a marketing and production company born out of their work promoting the Deadpool films. They understood that marketing did not need bloated budgets to be effective. It just needed to be sharp, fast and culturally relevant, and the company quickly made a name for itself with witty, self-aware, low cost viral campaigns.

One of its biggest wins came in response to the infamous 2019 Peloton ad, which sparked backlash for depicting a husband gifting his already fit wife an exercise bike, followed by a montage of her documenting her fitness journey, which she later nervously shows him. Viewers quickly labeled it tone deaf and dystopian, accusing it of promoting unhealthy body image expectations and portraying a woman trapped in a performative relationship. Within 48 hours, Maximum Effort released a parody ad for Aviation Gin, which Reynolds owned, featuring the same actress, now looking emotionally scarred and sipping a martini while her friends reassure her that she is safe now. The ad did not need to name Peloton; everyone got the reference. It was clever, timely and instantly viral, racking up millions of views and generating widespread media coverage while promoting Reynolds' own gin brand.

The strategy of using humor and cultural savvy to market products he owned paid off in a big way. Reynolds helped reposition Aviation Gin into one of the most talked about spirits in the industry, eventually selling it in a deal worth up to 610 million. He applied the same approach to Mint Mobile, turning the budget wireless carrier into a disruptive brand with personality, culminating in an acquisition by T-Mobile worth over 1 billion dollars in 2023. In the end, it was Deadpool, the film Fox did not want to make and the character Reynolds refused to give up on, that not only revived his career but gave him the blueprint for everything that followed. From resurrecting his place in Hollywood to building a billion dollar business empire, Deadpool did not just save Ryan Reynolds; it turned him into a powerhouse.

Do you think Deadpool would ever have reached theaters if that test reel had never leaked online?