While Ryan Reynolds is best known for playing character with a comedic edge in movies like Free Guy and Deadpool, his more dramatic turn in The Adam Project has drawn a lot of praise from critics and audiences. Someone else who had a lot of admiration for Reynolds’ performance is the film’s director, Shawn Levy, who heaped praise on Reynolds acting skills in sci-fi action movie, which scored the third highest opening for an original Netflix movie, and ended its first week on release with over 90 million hours viewed.
While many of Reynolds’ fans have enjoyed his recent outings in action comedies Red Notice and Free Guy, The Adam Project sees the Canadian’s more serious side coming out. Having gained acclaim for his roles in movies like Buried, Safe House and 6 Underground, it is by no means the first time he has turned in a performance that requires more than his brand of fast-talking sarcasm, and it certainly won’t be his last.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
While discussing the movie with Collider, director Levy, who also teamed up with Reynolds on Free Guy and will be helming Deadpool 3, explained that there was one scene in particular that sold Reynolds raw and dramatic performance. Levy commented:
“We all know, Ryan Reynolds, he’s been famous a long time, but man, on that scene, I mounted the camera to the truck and I said, “Ryan, drive away. You’re driving away from the only woman you’ve ever loved,” and he just brought it. It’s in the kind of scene that we don’t see Ryan do every day and it felt special and it felt raw. The same thing, Zoe is staring down her own death. And there’s not a line of dialogue, and she plays 17 different emotions as camera slowly pushes in. It’s one of Ryan’s and my favorite moments too.”
Shawn Levy Will Have Many More Collaborations With Ryan Reynolds
Having already had success together with Free Guy and now The Adam Project, there is likely to be a lot of collaborations to come from the association of Levy and Reynolds, and having impressed the director so much, Reynolds could find more of those movies taking a dramatic turn.
With their Deadpool 3 team up already seemingly set in stone, the pair will more than likely get together again for the Free Guy sequels that are expected to turn the video-game orientated movie into a franchise. Last month 20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell gave a promising update for Free Guy fans when he revealed that a script for the sequel was “only days away” from being completed, and when giving an overview of the studio’s plans added, “We have more Free Guy movies coming.”
Reynolds has been on an unstoppable roll in the last two decades, having released at least one movie every year since 1999, even through the pandemic thanks to his voice role in The Croods: A New Age in 2020, which was followed up with action comedy sequel, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard earlier in 2021 and his other Netflix smash Red Notice, which is also in line for a couple of sequels.
Currently, Reynolds’ next project is the Apple TV+ movie Spirited with Will Ferrell, which completed filming last year and was followed by an announcement by Reynolds that he was taking a short sabbatical from acting. According to the actor, work on the script for Deadpool 3 will be his main focus in the immediate future, with the film expected to start filming later this year if everything comes together as expected. For now though, he can bask in the glory of The Adam Project, which is available everywhere on Netflix.
