Is Deadpool the Biggest Box-Office Success of His Acting Career?

One of the popular Hollywood actors who has not only garnered a lot of appreciation as a superhero but also ruled over hearts with his witty mouth and charming onscreen presence. This actor is none other than Ryan Reynolds, who served a blockbuster hit movie, Deadpool & Wolverine recently and broke all the box office records. However, he has also seen his fair share of flops. He is an actor, a producer, and a happily married man with four children.

The list of Ryan’s successful movies might weigh a little more than his flops, but the actor has surely seen a few worst box office numbers. However, he never really paid any heed to it and always tried his best to give and entertain his massive audience. Since the 1990s, Reynolds has been working in the acting industry. He didn’t find his success overnight, and it took years to become the superstar he is now.

Ryan Reynolds’ biggest Box Office success: The Deadpool franchise

Reynolds has jumped genres from rom-coms to action movies to superhero flicks and weaved his journey with magic. But it is true that the 48-year-old actor’s comedic timing and intense action sequences indeed made him achieve the biggest success in 2016 with Deadpool. Debatably, this franchise has clearly proved his worth as an exceptional actor. Nobody could have justified Wade Wilson other than him.

His journey as Wade Wilson began in 2016, followed by the film’s sequel in 2018 and the threequel in 2024. Reynolds’ first box office success with a smashing hit is probably Deadpool, which grossed $783 million worldwide with a budget of $58 million, as per Box Office Mojo. He then managed to earn another box office hit with Deadpool 2 as it grossed $786 million worldwide. It also was marked as the highest-grossing film in the X-Men series in 2018.

However, Ryan’s biggest box office collection has to be Deadpool & Wolverine, which also starred Hugh Jackman. The third venture of this franchise had surprising cameos from all the places. This big-budgeted movie was made with $200 million. But the numbers it earned at the box office globally blew everyone’s minds. It grossed $1.3 billion and became the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time.

Ryan Reynolds’ Box Office successes: Free Guy, The Proposal & more

Reynolds has always gone with his guts and tried to take up something challenging in his career. Movies like Bullet Train, Free Guy, and others on that list had been such projects that had no expectations to begin with but didn’t crash at the box office.

Free Guy is such a movie that is by far one of the best and wittiest comedy dramas based on video games that will make you believe those worlds to be real. Directed by Shawn Levy (Deadpool maker), this film brought in a refreshing concept within a budget of $100 million. However, it grossed $331 million globally which can be tagged as a hit in his filmography. Ryan made his character so believable that it didn’t seem like he was acting.

His another box-office success was the rom-com movie The Proposal with Sandra Bullock. Even though it received mixed reactions from the critics, the audience enjoyed the onscreen chemistry between the two, and also the timing of the release worked as well. The 2000s was the peak era of silly rom-coms and people loved the movie thoroughly. It earned around $317 million globally.

Reynolds’ other movie that didn’t get much love from the critics but earned a decent amount at the box office, making it an average hit film, is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. His recent movie If directed by John Krasinski was released with a lot of expectations but it couldn’t churn out money at the box office that much. It only garnered $190 million and was tagged as a disappointing flick. However, the movie had voice actors as the stellar star cast, including Emily Blunt, Blake Lively, Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Cooper, Amy Schumer, and more.

Bullet Train is one such movie where Reynolds is not the main lead but catches everyone’s attention with his surprise element. As per a report in ScreenRant, there is a joke that the director David Leitch convinced Brad Pitt to be in Deadpool 2, and for that Reynolds owes it to him to be in Bullet Train. He comes on board but skips from being in the advertisement of the movie.

His supporting presence ignited the whole storyline of the film as his character made Brad get on that bullet train. It also earned $239 million globally against a budget of just $85 million, making it a huge success. Other movies that can be labeled as average hits in his career graph – Definitely Maybe, Safe House, Blade: Trinity, The Amityville Horror, and so on.

Ryan Reynolds’ biggest Box Office flop movie changed his career path

Reynolds began his career with television and slowly stepped into Hollywood with Van Wilder in 2002. Being a newcomer, this film surprisingly did quite well at the box office, and eventually, he became a known face in the industry with back-to-back decent movies.

However, amidst this, the charming actor signed a superhero flick named Green Lantern which was supposed to launch the DC universe and the Green Lantern franchise as well. It was made with a budget of $200 million. But the disastrous outcome shattered every dream possible. The storyline revolves around Hal Jordan who gets superpowers after accidentally getting chosen by a green ring. However, as Spiderman says ‘With great powers come great responsibilities’, Jordan also faces the dangerous Parallax. What happens next is all about the film.

At the Just For Laughs comedy festival when the actor was asked what was his reaction while watching Green Lantern, Ryan said:

Shooting the movie was a lot of fun. But, you know, sitting in that premiere, watching that… oh my God, it’s tough. The words were ‘holy s***’ and ‘no, no!’It was crazy. It was an odd feeling. It was not a feeling I wanted to repeat. So I really spent the following years just owning as much as I could, it was the only way to kind of process it.

When he was asked why it failed so miserably, the actor responded, “There were just too many people spending too much money, and when there was a problem rather than say, ‘OK, let’s stop spending on special effects and let’s think about character’. That just never… the thinking was never there to do that. And to their credit, it’s a very old-school way of looking at things. It’s just ‘Let’s just keep spending our way through this.’ And that was… it didn’t work.”

It garnered only $220 million globally and raised questions about Reynolds’ box-office churning abilities. Well, professionally Green Lantern was a failure but personally he met Blake Lively (the female lead) on the sets, and the rest is history. However, the actor never stopped dreaming about making movies based on comic books. And even after failing with DC’s Green Lantern, he went ahead and said ‘yes’ to R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D is a movie based on the 1999 comic book series of the same name, where Reynolds’ plays Nick, a Boston police detective who dies after his partner betrays him and gets recruited into the Rest in Peace Department. How things then turn out for Nick and how he gets partnered up with a long-dead Old West lawman (Jeff Bridges) is all about the film.

Ryan must have thought that Green Lantern would have been his worst box office collection until R.I.P.D came in. That film grossed $78.3 million as per The Numbers against a budget of $154 million (approx). Rotten Tomatoes even graded it 12%. It was one of the biggest financial disasters in the actor’s career graph. In an old interview with Los Angeles, the actor had said,

I’ve done movies that I shouldn’t have done because they were going to pay me, and that was at the time very appealing and exciting. When you arrive in Hollywood, and you come from where I come from, you think, ‘Of course, I’m gonna do that.’ I found the most difficult roles were the ones where I had to portray some sort of ideal of masculinity — that’s when I felt sort of fake and weird. But in a comedy like this, I let go of that. There was a complete absence of machismo.

After that, the seasoned actor tried to focus on better content that commercial appeal and appeared in the horror-comedy The Voices in 2014. The movie got amazing reviews but at the box office, it grossed $2.2 million approximately. Ryan then featured in a fairly budgeted film named The Captive. Even though he gave a solid performance and received rave reviews, the flick couldn’t draw money at the box office. It grossed approximately $2 million in total.

Following The Captive, Reynolds tried to put him out there more in different ways. He played a layered character in Mississippi Grind which not only garnered positive responses from the critics, but it also grossed less than $500 million at the box office. Ryan has surely seen his fair share of highs and lows in his career so far but Deadpool has been a turning point in his filmography, and there’s no doubt.

Ryan has never stopped trying his limits. From flaunting his handsome face card to proving his worth as an exceptional actor after much trial and error, he is now a superstar. His comedic timing, witty brain, and action-packed performances are loved by all. While he has been a part of the biggest-budgeted movies under MCU, he has also starred in various small projects and featured in supporting roles. He knows how to win hearts and does it efficiently.

His performance in Deadpool will always be talked about. And not only at the box office, Ryan has also made waves on the OTT platforms with his films like Red Notice and Life. After breaking records with Deadpool & Wolverine, the actor is now gearing up for his upcoming movie Animal Friends, which is an American live-action/animated road-action film. Directed by Peter Atencio, the film also will star Jason Momoa, Vince Vaughn, Aubrey Plaza, and more. A career is all about highs and lows but Ryan Reynolds has shown us how to move forward with better opportunities.