Ryan Reynolds: Leak “100%” Led To Deadpool Movie, No Green Lantern Script When He Auditioned

Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool movie seemed like it was stuck in production hell, but shortly after a leaked copy of test footage came online 20th Century Fox gave it the green light. Was the leak the only reason Deadpool finally got off the ground? “Exclusively the leaked test footage, 100 percent,” Ryan Reynolds told Yahoo.”

Ryan Reynolds, like most people, thought director Tim Miller might have leaked it, but after checking into it that doesn’t seem to be the case. “The initial [leak] came from Fox they think — someone recorded the footage on their iPhone and then released it,” Reynolds explained. “And then once that happened, somebody hacked into Blurred Studios and got the original footage in high-res and put it online.”

No matter who leaked it, Reynolds is just happy that it finally leaked out. Even the people that were trying to make the film happen thought about leaking it themselves. “I was excited, because you can look back at an email chain from all of us, the core group involved in Deadpool, saying “We should leak this, f—-,” like three years ago,” he confessed. “Saying, “Hey, if this thing is going to stagnate, one of us should just say ‘Whoops, I slipped it online by accident.’” And nobody seemed to want to nut up and do that, myself included. Someone did it for us, years later, when we all completely assumed it was dead in the water.”

Now that Reynolds is dipping his toe back into superhero films, what has he learned since Green Lantern? “Well, script,” he replied. “When we shot Green Lantern, nobody auditioning for the role of Green Lantern was given the opportunity to read the script, because the script didn’t exist. I’m not complaining about it — it was an opportunity of a lifetime, and if I were to go back and retrace my steps, I would probably do everything the exact same way. But script, that’s what’s different on this one.”

Deadpool arrives in theaters February 12, 2016.