Ryan Reynolds: 10 films that show his range

This is a researched feature, separate from Nick Atwal’s personal film reviews.

Long before he was Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds was a toddler at the community centre pool in Kitsilano; in 2019 he shared a local newspaper clipping of him there at about three. Even then, he was getting press. He was born in Vancouver on October 23, 1976, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia and Britannica, and grew up in the city.

Most of these films were made far from home: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Barcelona, near Berlin, England. Two weren’t. Deadpool and Deadpool 2, the films that made him a franchise star, were shot in and around Vancouver. He built the career elsewhere, then brought its defining character home to shoot.

The ten are chosen for range, not box office. Each follows four threads: the film, Vancouver and B.C.’s screen industry at the time, the wider Hollywood business and where Reynolds stood in his career. Box office is North American unless stated, and sources are listed at the end.

1. Deadpool (2016)

   2016 · Directed by Tim Miller · Wade Wilson / Deadpool

   The R-rated Marvel adaptation that built a franchise around Reynolds’s fast, self-mocking delivery took a leak to get made. It sat stalled for years until late July 2014, when nearly two minutes of old test footage, profane and violent, turned up online. Fox had reportedly been nervous about an R-rated comic-book film, but the fan response pushed it to greenlight the movie and date it for February 12, 2016. Reynolds denied leaking the footage when the film came out. He later admitted at a Toronto International Film Festival Q&A that he had, to force the issue. The call was coming from inside the house. It was Tim Miller’s first feature as director.

   Opening weekend proved the caution wrong: $135 million by studio estimates, the biggest debut for an R-rated film at the time, ahead of The Matrix Reloaded’s $91.7 million in 2003 and far above forecasts of about $60 million. Reports put the budget at $58 million and the worldwide gross at more than $780 million.

   Vancouver in 2016

   Deadpool came home to shoot. Equipment supplier PS Production Services said it supported about two and a half months of location shooting in Vancouver. In April 2015 the Georgia Viaduct, a main commuter route into downtown, closed for two weeks so the production could stage a crash and a fight on its deck. Production manager Michael Williams said it went off without a hitch. Reynolds publicly thanked the city, and the commuters caught up in it, for letting the film be made at home. According to the Motion Picture Association of Canada, more than 2,000 British Columbians worked on it as actors, crew and extras.

   It opened into a boom. Creative BC counted 297 productions and $1.9 billion in production spending in fiscal 2015/16, then a record $2.6 billion across 338 productions in 2016/17, based on the budgets of productions certified for B.C. tax credits. The money kept coming even as the province pulled back. In May 2016, Finance Minister Michael de Jong announced that, for productions starting on or after October 1, 2016, the basic production services credit would fall from 33 to 28 per cent of B.C. labour costs, and the visual effects and animation credit from 17.5 to 16 per cent. The province had forecast payouts of $491 million for 2015, against an average of $313 million over the previous three years.

   Hollywood in 2016

   A superhero film that mocked superhero films, and audiences wanted in on the joke. It beat the February opening record Fifty Shades of Grey had set a year earlier ($85.1 million), and its $12.7 million from Thursday-night previews was an R-rated record. For a studio that had hesitated over the rating, that settled it: an adult comic-book film could reach a mass audience.

   Reynolds in 2016

   Reynolds was 39, and Deadpool was a correction as much as a breakthrough. He had first played Wade Wilson seven years earlier in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, in a version fans widely disliked. The leaked footage dated from 2011 or 2012, accounts say, and the release capped a long push for a character the studio had been reluctant to make on his terms. That December brought Golden Globe nominations for best motion picture and for Reynolds as best actor, in the musical or comedy categories; coverage noted it was the first live-action superhero film to compete for the Globes’ top film award. The Writers Guild of America nominated Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s screenplay. His career reset around the role.

   Why it matters

   A Vancouver-born actor became a franchise lead on his hometown’s streets, with more than 2,000 British Columbians on the job, just as the province’s boom took off, and the film’s success brought him back for a second, bigger Vancouver shoot. Some stars thank their hometown in a speech. Reynolds thanked its commuters.

2. Buried (2010)

   2010 · Directed by Rodrigo Cortés · Paul Conroy

   One man, one coffin, nowhere else for the camera to go. Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, an American civilian truck driver working in Iraq in 2006 who wakes up buried in a wooden coffin after insurgents attack his truck, with little more than a lighter, a flashlight and a mobile phone. He calls his family, his employer and the authorities while his captors demand a ransom. He’s the focus of nearly every shot, and you never see outside the box. The concept is the performance.

   Rodrigo Cortés made it fast and cheap: CBC reported it was shot in 17 days in Barcelona, with a small crew and a budget of about $2 million. Chris Sparling’s screenplay made the Black List, the annual survey of Hollywood executives’ favourite scripts. It premiered in January 2010 in the Sundance Film Festival’s Park City at Midnight section. Negotiations began the morning after, and Lionsgate bought the U.S. rights for a reported $3.2 million, which TheWrap called the festival’s first big pickup. The bleak ending reportedly put off several larger buyers.

   Vancouver in 2010

   Buried had no B.C. connection, and 2010 was hard on the industry Reynolds grew up around. Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics, and a provincial industry report covered by Playback found B.C. production spending fell to about $1 billion in 2010 from $1.3 billion in 2009, blaming tax credits in central Canada, the rising Canadian dollar and a production slowdown during the Games. Domestic production rose slightly, to $244 million from $218 million.

   The competition was real. In June 2009 Ontario expanded its production services credit to 25 per cent of all production costs in the province, not just labour, and Quebec adopted a similar all-spend model. B.C. answered by raising its own credit on labour from 25 to 33 per cent, but Playback noted the province still faced a large incentive gap with Ontario and Quebec.

   Hollywood in 2010

   The independent route at its leanest: a low-budget film shot outside the United States around a Hollywood star, launched and sold at Sundance. The quick Lionsgate deal suggests what buyers saw, a recognizable lead in a contained, inexpensive concept. Contained is one word for it.

   Reynolds in 2010

   Reynolds was 33 when Buried premiered, half a year after the mainstream hit The Proposal. Going from a studio romantic comedy to a coffin was a hard turn, and he has described the confined shoot as physically punishing. In December 2010 he and Scarlett Johansson announced their separation; their divorce was finalized in July 2011.

   Why it matters

   Buried is the purest test on this list of whether Reynolds can hold a screen alone, made far from Vancouver while his hometown’s industry was losing ground to Ontario and Quebec. A Canadian star can carry a film anywhere. Keeping the work at home is a different job.

3. Mississippi Grind (2015)

   2015 · Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck · Curtis

   Two near-strangers, a pile of debt and a road south. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck wrote and directed this 1970s-style road movie, which follows Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn from Dubuque, Iowa, toward New Orleans. Mendelsohn plays Gerry, a poker player deep in debt to bookmakers. Reynolds plays Curtis, the charming drifter whose arrival seems to change Gerry’s luck. Sienna Miller and Alfre Woodard co-star.

   It’s one of Reynolds’s quietest performances. Gerry gets the desperation. Curtis keeps his cards close. Variety called the performances terrific, and Den of Geek found a rawness and vulnerability beneath Reynolds’s movie-star surface. Shooting ran from January 19, 2014, in Mobile, Alabama, into March, with work in New Orleans and Baton Rouge; the Associated Press reported the leads travelled through Mississippi, Missouri, Louisiana and Alabama, taking in small towns, casinos and racetracks. Tough assignment. It premiered at Sundance on January 24, 2015, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and opened in U.S. theatres on September 25. Mendelsohn was nominated for the Film Independent Spirit Award for best male lead.

   Vancouver in 2015

   While Mississippi Grind made the festival rounds, Reynolds’s hometown was hosting his next film: Deadpool shot in Vancouver in the spring of 2015, closing the Georgia Viaduct for two weeks in April, and B.C. was heading into back-to-back record years.

   Hollywood in 2015

   Boden and Fleck were back at Sundance after about seven years. Their earlier features, Half Nelson (2006) and Sugar (2008), had premiered there. This is the director-driven independent film that festivals keep alive: modest, shot on location in the American South and built around two actors.

   Reynolds in 2015

   Reynolds was 38 at Sundance. Same year, two very different jobs: a small character study in Park City and, at home in Vancouver, the franchise film that would change his career.

   Why it matters

   Mississippi Grind is the clearest case on this list of Reynolds working against his own charm, and the range he carried into Deadpool, shot at home the same year. The wisecracks land harder once you know he can play it quiet.

4. Deadpool 2 (2018)

   2018 · Directed by David Leitch · Wade Wilson / Deadpool

   The sequel keeps Reynolds at the centre and widens the world: the X-Men’s mansion, a mutant orphanage, a prison called the Ice Box and a prison-convoy chase. Tim Miller left in October 2016 over creative differences with Reynolds and was replaced by David Leitch. Reynolds shares the screenplay credit with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and is one of the producers.

   It opened in the United States on May 18, 2018. Its North American opening of about $125.5 million fell short of the first film’s $132.4 million but knocked Avengers: Infinity War out of first place after three weeks, and its worldwide debut reached about $301 million. The Numbers puts its final worldwide gross at about $786 million. The first film bought the second a larger canvas, and much of it was British Columbia.

   Vancouver in 2018

   Shooting began in 2017 on Vancouver Island, where Reynolds posted a photo of Deadpool outside Hatley Castle at Royal Roads University in Colwood, which had played the X-Mansion in X-Men: The Last Stand. The castle has range too. By the end of June 2017, KFTV reported, filming had moved to Vancouver. The location team told Screen Global Production that about half of the 75 shoot days were spent on stages at Mammoth Studios in Burnaby.

   The rest was all over the map. The prison-convoy chase closed five blocks of two downtown streets for eight days over three weekends, which The Location Guide reported as the largest street closure for filming the city had granted, and its route also took in the Sea to Sky Highway north of Whistler, Cypress Bowl Road, the Lions Gate Bridge and Cambie Street. Hycroft Mansion in Vancouver doubled as part of the X-Mansion, a decommissioned power plant became the prison, a closed hospital building became the orphanage and Grouse Mountain supplied the snow scenes. Night shoots ran in alleys in the 300 blocks of Cambie and West Cordova Streets.

   The shoot also brought the production’s darkest moment. On August 14, 2017, Sequana Joi “SJ” Harris, a 40-year-old professional motorcycle racer from Brooklyn, was killed during a stunt near Jack Poole Plaza. She was working as a stand-in for Zazie Beetz, who played Domino, and it was her first job as a stunt performer. She was thrown from her motorcycle and crashed into the window of a building. WorkSafeBC’s investigation report, released in October 2019, found that the production company, TCF Vancouver Productions, had not carried out a risk assessment covering safety controls, the motorcycle’s speed and equipment limits, had not set up barriers to keep the rider and bike inside the set, and had not ensured she wore the required head protection, among other failures. The Hollywood Reporter summarized the findings as inadequate planning rather than rider error. Fox said it disputed some aspects of the report and had revised its stunt safety standards.

   The shoot fell in a record year. Creative BC counted 452 productions and $3.4 billion in production spending in B.C. in fiscal 2017/18, up 31 per cent, and its chief executive, Prem Gill, cited growing demand for visual effects as one reason.

   Hollywood in 2018

   In 2017/18, provincial spending on international television series nearly doubled, to $1.9 billion from $976 million, while spending on international feature films fell to $861 million from $1.18 billion. Television was rising and features were shrinking, though Deadpool 2 was a hard one to miss.

   It was also made while Fox still held the film rights to the character, as it had since the 1990s. On December 14, 2017, Disney announced it would acquire Fox’s film and television businesses, saying the deal would reunite the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and Deadpool with the Marvel family. The $71.3 billion acquisition closed on March 20, 2019, and the third Deadpool was made inside Marvel’s own cinematic universe.

   Reynolds in 2018

   Reynolds was 40 during the 2017 shoot, two years after the first film closed the Georgia Viaduct. Now a credited co-writer and a producer too, he was back in his hometown with a bigger production and a character firmly tied to him.

   Why it matters

   Deadpool 2 has the most fully documented B.C. footprint of any film on this list, from Colwood to Burnaby to the Sea to Sky Highway. Made in a record year increasingly driven by television, it marks the big-feature era as much as Reynolds’s career: a hometown star with his own franchise, in a city turning to the small screen.

5. The Voices (2014)

   2014 · Directed by Marjane Satrapi · Jerry Hickfang

   Jerry Hickfang seems likeable: a factory worker who is, in fact, a schizophrenic loner close to breaking. His pets talk to him, and Reynolds voices both. The cat, with a Scottish accent, urges Jerry toward his worst impulses. The dog stands for steadiness. When Jerry takes his medication, the animals fall silent and the film’s bright world turns grim. Marjane Satrapi, known for the animated Persepolis, directed from Michael R. Perry’s script, with Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick and Jacki Weaver co-starring.

   It’s a grisly horror comedy, and reviews split sharply: one British critic called it hateful, others praised its look and Satrapi’s comic sensibility. It premiered at Sundance on January 19, 2014, played the Toronto International Film Festival’s Vanguard program and reached U.S. audiences through Lionsgate in February 2015.

   Vancouver in 2014

   The Voices shot in Germany from April to June 2013, at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam and on location in Berlin and Brandenburg. Vancouver’s visual effects sector, meanwhile, landed a headquarters: by May 2014 Sony Pictures Imageworks had moved its head office and production from Culver City, California, to Vancouver, citing the province’s incentives and the city’s growing pool of effects artists, and it planned a downtown studio with room for about 700 employees. For Reynolds, the year’s decisive Vancouver story came in late July 2014, when the Deadpool test footage leaked and Fox committed to the film.

   Hollywood in 2014

   It shows how independent English-language films were stitched together across borders. Studio Babelsberg co-produced alongside Mandalay Vision, 1984 Private Defense Contractors and Vertigo Entertainment. The numbers weren’t kind: reported figures put the budget at about $11 million and the box office at about $2.2 million.

   Reynolds in 2014

   Reynolds was 37 at the premiere. In 2012 he had married Blake Lively, his co-star in Green Lantern (2011). Taking the lead and voicing two other characters in an off-centre international production with little commercial safety net, he was testing the likeable screen persona he’d built.

   Why it matters

   The Voices anticipates Deadpool in one specific way: it lets Reynolds talk to himself, in several registers, while one of those voices urges his character toward his worst impulses. Six months later, the Deadpool leak put that skill on the road home. Turns out Reynolds’s best scene partner is Reynolds.

6. The Proposal (2009)

   2009 · Directed by Anne Fletcher · Andrew Paxton

   Here’s one for Canadian viewers: the person facing deportation is the Canadian. Sandra Bullock plays Margaret, a Canadian executive at a New York publishing house whose visa renewal is denied, and Reynolds plays Andrew Paxton, her long-suffering assistant, whom she pressures into marrying her for a green card. Andrew names his terms, including a promotion to editor, and a trip to his family in Sitka, Alaska, follows. Anne Fletcher directed from Peter Chiarelli’s screenplay.

   It was a big hit, opening at No. 1 on June 19, 2009, with about $33.6 million, which early reports called by far the biggest opening of Bullock’s career. The Numbers puts its final gross at about $164 million in North America and about $315 million worldwide, against a $40 million production budget. Screen Daily called it a likeable romantic comedy with two charismatic leads held back by a predictable story. Of the ten, it best shows his mainstream appeal: holding his own opposite an established star in a studio comedy built for a wide audience.

   Vancouver in 2009

   The film’s Alaska was built from Massachusetts. Rockport was the main stand-in for Sitka, with scenes in Gloucester, Beverly, Manchester-by-the-Sea and Boston. None of it was filmed in Alaska. B.C., meanwhile, was leaning on large American features. B.C. Film Commission data for 2009, reported by the Georgia Straight, showed provincial spending rising to $1.3 billion from $1.2 billion even as the number of projects fell from 260 to 239. Foreign spending rose to $1.09 billion from $841 million, helped by The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Tron: Legacy and Percy Jackson, while domestic production fell to $217 million from $365 million. More money, fewer projects, less of it Canadian.

   Hollywood in 2009

   Here was a star-driven romantic comedy at No. 1, with a geography typical of the period: set in Alaska and New York, made largely on the Massachusetts coast.

   Reynolds in 2009

   Reynolds was 32 when The Proposal opened, about 11 weeks after Adventureland. The same year brought X-Men Origins: Wolverine, his first turn as Wade Wilson, the character who would become Deadpool. He has said he was filming The Proposal at the same time, that the writers’ strike left him writing most of his own dialogue, and that the studio’s late decision to sew the character’s mouth shut was one of the most foolish notes he had seen. They took away the mouth. He’d get it back.

   Why it matters

   The Proposal is the clearest measure on this list of Reynolds’s mainstream pull before Deadpool. That same year, his hometown was leaning on big American studio productions to stay busy. Both were in the Hollywood business: one in front of the camera, the other renting out the backdrop.

7. Adventureland (2009)

   2009 · Directed by Greg Mottola · Mike Connell

   Greg Mottola based Adventureland on his own 1984 summer job at the Adventureland amusement park in Farmingdale, New York, though he set the film in 1987. Jesse Eisenberg plays James, a college graduate stuck in a run-down park job, and Kristen Stewart plays Em, the co-worker he pursues. Reynolds is Mike Connell, the park’s married maintenance man, who gets involved with the young staff, Em included. It was released on April 3, 2009.

   It’s a supporting role, and an uncomfortable one. Reynolds uses the easy charm audiences knew from his comedies to make Connell attractive to the younger workers, then lets you see what that charm is covering. Same charm, different job.

   Vancouver in 2009

   Adventureland wasn’t shot at Adventureland. Mottola had considered the real park but found it too heavily remodelled, and The Pitt News reported that filmmakers could get a larger tax rebate in Pennsylvania than in New York. So the film went to Kennywood, an amusement park in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. A summer-job story shot in winter, it had crews removing and hiding snow. Movie magic is mostly shovelling.

   The same incentive arithmetic was reshaping Vancouver. TheWrap reported in April 2009 that a February extension of B.C.’s film and television tax credits, together with a falling Canadian dollar, was helping revive production in the city. Canadian-owned production still fell that year: B.C. Film Commission figures showed domestic productions dropping from 174 in 2008 to 155 in 2009, and the B.C. branch of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association called it a 40 per cent drop in domestic production levels.

   Hollywood in 2009

   Mottola had directed Superbad, written by Vancouver’s own Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, two years earlier; Adventureland was a smaller, more personal follow-up. A story rooted in one specific Long Island park was made in Pennsylvania because the rebate was better, the same calculation that sent American productions to B.C., Ontario and Quebec.

   Reynolds in 2009

   Reynolds was 32. A supporting part in a small, personal coming-of-age film, released less than three months before he co-led a studio hit in The Proposal, points to an actor interested in more than leading-man roles.

   Why it matters

   Adventureland is the smallest Reynolds role on this list and one of the most revealing. A Long Island story, shot in Pennsylvania for a better rebate: in 2009 Vancouver was competing with American states too, and it knows that game from both sides.

8. Free Guy (2021)

   2021 · Directed by Shawn Levy · Guy

   Guy is a cheerful bank teller who doesn’t know he’s a non-player character, a background figure in a violent video game called Free City. Then Millie, a programmer played by Jodie Comer, draws him out of his routine through her in-game character. Shawn Levy directed from a screenplay by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, Joe Keery and Taika Waititi co-star, and reviewers reached for The Truman Show, The Matrix and Groundhog Day. It’s an original, high-concept comedy, not a franchise entry.

   The pandemic kept moving its release: from July 3, 2020, to December 2020, then to May 21, 2021, and finally to August 13, 2021. A film about a man stuck in a routine spent the pandemic stuck in one. It premiered at the Locarno Film Festival on August 10, 2021, opened to a reported $28 million, slightly ahead of the more heavily promoted The Suicide Squad, and grossed about $331.5 million worldwide.

   Vancouver in 2021

   Free Guy has no documented B.C. production story; Boston.com reported in April 2019 that it would shoot in the Boston area that spring. Reynolds’s hometown came out of the shutdowns with a record year: the Vancouver Economic Commission counted $4.8 billion in direct spending on film, television, visual effects and animation in 2021, up 40 per cent from $3.4 billion in 2020, when productions were halted, and above the previous high of $4.1 billion in 2019. (KFTV called it Vancouver’s total, Business in Vancouver the province’s.)

   Hollywood in 2021

   It opened into a theatrical business still recovering from pandemic closures. Disney gave it a 45-day exclusive run in theatres, about half a typical exclusive window, before a digital release on September 28, 2021, and it reached Disney+ in February 2022. Even the studio name spoke of consolidation: it was one of the first major films released under 20th Century Studios, the name Disney gave the former 20th Century Fox after buying it.

   Reynolds in 2021

   Reynolds was 44. Five years after Deadpool, he could open an original comedy, no sequel, no adaptation, to a solid result in a cautious market, and the business side had grown too. In August 2020 Diageo agreed to buy Aviation American Gin, which he co-owned, in a deal worth up to $610 million, with Reynolds keeping a stake. In February 2021 he and the actor Rob McElhenney completed their takeover of Wrexham AFC, a fifth-tier Welsh club.

   Why it matters

   Free Guy shows how far Deadpool’s success could reach: a Vancouver-born actor carrying an original studio comedy through a release schedule the pandemic tore up. Deadpool gave him the persona. Free Guy showed it could travel without the mask.

9. Definitely, Maybe (2008)

   2008 · Written and directed by Adam Brooks · Will Hayes

   A romantic comedy with a puzzle built in. Reynolds plays Will Hayes, a former political hopeful now working in advertising and going through a divorce. When his daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin), asks how he met her mother, he tells the story with the names changed, so she has to work out which of three women, played by Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and Isla Fisher, is the one. Adam Brooks wrote and directed.

   It was released on February 14, 2008. Time Out gave it three stars out of five and noted it came from Working Title, the company behind Richard Curtis’s romantic comedies. Reviews pulled both ways: one found Reynolds a genial but bland lead, another judged the film a smarter love story than the formula romances around it. The verdict, fittingly: definitely, maybe.

   Vancouver in 2008

   B.C.’s screen industry spent 2008 under pressure. The Canadian dollar had reached parity with the U.S. dollar in the fall of 2007, and industry coverage blamed the strong currency, the U.S. writers’ strike and competition from other jurisdictions for falling spending. Playback reported that offshore work slowed in the second half of 2008 because of the dollar and a Screen Actors Guild contract dispute, hitting post-production houses that depended on American clients; one effects company said 90 per cent of its business was U.S. work.

   Hollywood in 2008

   The film opened into a crowded season for romantic comedies; one review at the time set it against Fool’s Gold and 27 Dresses. The industry was heading from the writers’ strike of 2007–08 toward a contract fight with the Screen Actors Guild, just as the recession arrived.

   Reynolds in 2008

   Reynolds was 31. The film gave him a romantic lead with a reflective shape, a father narrating his own past, at a time when he moved between studio comedies and smaller, stranger projects. That September he married the actor Scarlett Johansson in his home province, at the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort near Tofino, a floatplane ride from the town. CTV reported it was the first marriage for both.

   Why it matters

   Definitely, Maybe is the gentlest film on this list and an early sign of the self-aware storytelling Reynolds would later push much further. Will controls the story he’s telling, and slightly rigs it. Deadpool would rig it outright.

10. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

    2024 · Directed by Shawn Levy · Wade Wilson / Deadpool

    The third film pairs Deadpool with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and brings the character into Marvel’s cinematic universe. Reynolds shares the screenplay credit with Shawn Levy, who had directed him in Free Guy, and with Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Zeb Wells. Levy has described the team-up as a descendant of the road comedies Midnight Run and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

    It opened in North America on July 26, 2024, with about $205 million by studio estimates, an opening record for an R-rated film. The previous record, about $132 million, belonged to the first Deadpool. Deadpool beat Deadpool. Its worldwide opening topped $438 million, and by its second weekend its North American total of $395.6 million had passed The Passion of the Christ, making it the highest-grossing R-rated release in North America, unadjusted for inflation.

    Vancouver in 2024

    This time Deadpool didn’t come home. The third film was shot mainly in England, beginning in May 2023 at Pinewood Studios and at locations including Bovingdon and Norfolk. The franchise that had closed the Georgia Viaduct, and later staged the largest street closure for filming the city had granted, had moved on.

    The strikes that interrupted the film hit B.C. hard. Creative BC put the province’s 2023 production spending at about $2.3 billion, down 29 per cent from $3.3 billion in 2022, and said industry jobs fell from 37,000 to 26,000. The CMPA, as reported by Business in Vancouver, put B.C. film and television production at about $2.4 billion for April 2023 to March 2024, down 27 per cent. In 2024 the province announced it would raise its production services tax credit for international productions from 28 to 36 per cent for projects starting principal photography after December 31, 2024. The cameras were coming back: by mid-August 2024, the City of Vancouver had issued 733 permitted filming days for the year, against 362 at the same point in 2023.

    Hollywood in 2024

    The film bears the mark of the 2023 strikes. Production stopped in July 2023 when SAG-AFTRA walked out; at the Toronto International Film Festival that September, Levy said filming was about halfway done. Work resumed in November and finished in January 2024. When the film opened, Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian argued that the long-held assumption of a ceiling on R-rated box office had been demolished.

    Reynolds in 2024

    Reynolds was 47, and a credited co-writer of the film that carried his character into Marvel’s main franchise. He and Lively had welcomed their fourth child in early 2023. That March, T-Mobile agreed to buy the parent company of Mint Mobile, which Reynolds had promoted as its spokesperson, for up to $1.35 billion; the deal closed on May 1, 2024, with Reynolds keeping his role. Wrexham had won promotion back into the English Football League in 2023 after 15 years away. In December 2024 he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada, and he was invested in Ottawa on July 1, 2025.

    Why it matters

    This is where the gamble that began with leaked test footage and a Vancouver shoot ended up: a record-breaking R-rated release, made in England and folded into Marvel’s franchise. The biggest numbers came later, and from somewhere else. The hometown chapter belongs to the first two films.

What the ten films add up to

Put the ten side by side and you get two careers running at once. One is the Hollywood lead who could open a romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock or carry an original studio comedy through a pandemic release. The other is the actor who chose a coffin in Barcelona, a schizophrenic’s talking pets near Berlin and a gambler’s road trip through the American South. Deadpool joined the two, and it was made in Vancouver.

The hometown thread is small and specific: a childhood photo at a Kitsilano pool, a 2015 shoot that closed the Georgia Viaduct and employed more than 2,000 British Columbians, and a 2017 sequel that ran from Hatley Castle to Burnaby stages and downtown streets. The honours followed: the National Arts Centre Award, part of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, reported by CTV as the 2021 award; the Order of British Columbia; and appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada, announced in December 2024. Most of his films were made somewhere else. The two that made him a franchise star were made at home.

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