Ryan Reynolds Calls on Academy to Add Best Stunts Category
Ryan Reynolds took to social media on Wednesday to champion his Deadpool & Wolverine stunt team, and called on the Academy Awards to add a category to “recognize the amazing work of stunt teams across the industry.”
“Stunt work doesn’t have a category at The Oscars and I hope that’ll change someday. So many films SMASHED it this year… Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Chaplin were stunt performers as well as filmmakers. Telling stories with their entire bodies,” wrote Reynolds in an Instagram post alongside photos of him and his stunt crew on set. “The #DeadpoolAndWolverine stunt team over-delivered. Many are friends I’ve worked with for years and I’ll spend the rest of my days doodling their names in my Heidi Stationary, dotting all the “i’s” with little hearts.”
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The star thanked his stunt double and fight coordinator, Alex Kyshkovych (who has also worked on X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and The Predator), stunt coordinator George Cottle (who Reynolds called a “genius” on Spider-Man: No Way Home), Hugh Jackman’s stunt double Daniel Stevens (who has been “‘Wolverining’ a long time”), and longtime stuntman Andy Lister for “bringing a new and insane Wolvie gear to the Deadpool Corps.” In his post, Reynolds also thanked the rest of his crew of stunt coordinators and core team of stunt performers.
Reynolds served as a producer on Deadpool and became a credited writer on Deadpool 2, as well as Deadpool & Wolverine, which brought on writers Zeb Wells and Shawn Levy, who also directed the film. In July, the actor told the New York Times how screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick brought the first film in the franchise to life and why he took the “little salary” he had left to fund the on-set writers room.
“No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success. I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen,” he said. “They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.”
He added, “I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time. I remembered wanting to feel that more — not just on Deadpool, but on anything.”
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