Background information
Ruined in the edit: «Suicide Squad», DC's biggest failure yet
by Luca Fontana
"Deadpool" only exists because someone committed a crime and got away with it
7.11.2018
Translation: machine translated
A leak made the "Deadpool" film possible in the first place. The search for the culprit is still ongoing. There are exactly four people in the world who could be behind it - including Ryan Reynolds.
The scene begins with Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl and ends with Angel Of The Morning by Juice Newtons. In between, Deadpool throws himself through the roof of a car and beats up three men before decapitating a fourth through the roof window. Before doing so, he turns to the audience and explains that he's only wearing his red suit so that the bad guys don't see him bleed. He makes stupid remarks, bad jokes that only fathers can make and is violent.
This is all computer animated. Demo material. This is often done in Hollywood, long before shooting begins, and is intended to convey the idea of the film to studio bosses. But it's never intended for the eyes of the public.
Then it happens: the scene is leaked onto the internet under mysterious circumstances.
Who leaked the footage is one of the biggest mysteries in film history. A high-profile Hollywood criminal case. There are four suspects, including actor Ryan Reynolds.
The leak and the suspects
The leak happened in July 2014. Director Tim Miller in an interview with Collider, July 2017:
"All of a sudden my phone rings. Someone says to me: "Dude! Your shit is online! Holy shit!" I was horrified. I felt sick. I was sure Fox was going to kill me."
Someone decided to put their entire career on the line, a whole four years after the demo video was made in 2010. The tricky thing is that the video belongs to 20th Century Fox. Anyone who leaks it is committing a crime. A crime that only goes unpunished if it is never revealed who committed it.
Who leaked the video?
Ryan Reynolds himself narrowed the circle of suspects down to four people during the OpieRadio show in February 2016:
"There are only four people who could have leaked the material. One of us did it. From the beginning, we kept saying to ourselves: "Someone should leak it"."
The four people are:
- Rhett Reese, screenwriter
- Paul Wernick, screenwriter
- Tim Miller, director
- Ryan Reynolds, actor
"But I'm pretty sure it wasn't me," Reynolds adds on the show.
They produced the two-minute sequence together in the summer of 2010, with a minimal budget provided by the studio. That's why the material belongs to the studio.
Source: 20th Century Fox
There, Deadpool's movements have been motion-captured by Reynolds, who has been on the Deadpool project since December 2004. He also lent his voice to the "Merc with a Mouth". Tim Miller, who would later direct the film, made his special effects company Blur Studio available. The two screenwriters Reese and Wernick worked with Reynolds on the dialogue.
They then submitted the material to the studio bosses, hoping to have a blockbuster on their hands that would blow fans away. But the studio didn't want to play along because the big-budget orgy of violence was too risky for them.
So Deadpool went quiet. For four years. Until the leak.
The plan works
Whoever posted the footage online knows that the leak is the film's last chance. And he is convinced: the fans will love Deadpool. Maybe even so much that their reaction will force the studio to make the film.
Source: 20th Century Fox
Fox tries to remove the clip from the internet. But it can no longer prevent it from spreading. The so-called Streisand effect occurs: Anyone who tries to suppress unwelcome information quickly attracts attention and achieves the exact opposite with their actions.
The studio fails. The perpetrator escapes.
Instead of a witch hunt, the green light is given for "Deadpool". According to Reynolds, even within 24 hours. Five months later, Fox finally admits defeat: "Deadpool" will be released in spring 2016.
"If the material hadn't received the reaction it did, it would have been a disaster. The project would have died for good," Reynolds told Variety in February 2016.
Today, four years after the leak, the careers of all those involved have taken a turn for the better. Together, the two Deadpool films have grossed over 1.5 billion dollars https://www.boxofficemojo.com/showdowns/chart/?id=deadpoolvdeadpool.htm. A record for FSK18 films. And a huge amount of money in general. Reason enough for Fox to look past the crime.
But the mystery surrounding the identity of the leaker lives on.
A new lead: The fifth man
Reynolds has always spoken of four suspects. And that on the grounds that they were the only ones who had knowledge of the video. That doesn't add up. The quality of the animations is too good to have been created by four people on some hobby laptop in a basement or an office or a study somewhere.
A new theory: Was the video leaked by a fifth man?
Reynolds plays and voices Deadpool using mo-cap. So there must have been mo-cap specialists on site to help with the filming. There must also have been more than one special effects artist involved, programming bad-boy models and motorways. Who maintained the servers, who provided the computing power with which the sequence was rendered?
Source: 20th Century Fox
Originally, the video was stored on Blur Studio's servers. Then, according to Reynolds, it lay fallow for four years - at Fox. The actual leak does not show the demo video itself, but simply a monitor filmed with a mobile phone on which the demo is running. This could have been anyone at Blur Studio or Fox who got wind of it and sympathised with the project. For example, an employee or a hacker who saw the mobile phone recording and then plundered the servers.
There is a possibility that a fifth person was involved. Reynolds might even know the person. And perhaps he is deliberately creating confusion with his own list of suspects in order to protect the fifth man.
Aftermath: The blame game
Reynolds and his crew use the fuss about the leaker to promote the films. Again and again. It's never clear to outsiders whether they even know the truth. But that's part of the game.
I won't reveal who leaked the video. But his name rhymes with «Byran Breynolds».
Reynolds, at least, isn't admitting to anything. Instead, he made the following comment last year during the press tour for the second Deadpool film:
I'm about 70 per cent sure it wasn't me.
In an interview with Yahoo Movies, Reynolds goes even further. Allegedly, everyone was convinced that director Tim Miller had leaked the video. However, when asked about it by Reynolds, Miller vehemently denied all blame.
I took him aside once, when the matter had long since blown over and no one could have harmed him. He told me: «Ryan, it really wasn't me.»
The last word
The identity of the leaker will never be revealed. Or at least not in the near future. The crime story is too good to be solved. Because it's extreme, strange and rebellious. Just like Deadpool.
If I had to guess, my guess would be the fifth man, who is protected by Reynolds. On the one hand, he has him to thank for the Deadpool film. On the other hand, the Canadian actor is now too big to be vulnerable. 1.5 billion dollars later anyway. And: Reynolds is irreplaceable as Deadpool.
The last word at the time of going to press belongs to the Canadian:
"Today is the four-year anniversary. Update July 2018: We're still looking for the bastard who leaked our test footage onto the internet and got Deadpool greenlit. Time to take the investigation into our own hands. #Furious"
Luca Fontana
Senior Editor
Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.chI'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.»
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