If all goes according to plan, Ryan Reynolds' biggest comic book movie series might not be "Green Lantern" after all — the actor just wrapped "R.I.P.D." this weekend, and he told The Playlist that the film is set up for a sequel.
"I'm a little slurry right now," Reynolds joked on Saturday, after having wrapped the film that morning in Boston and driven straight to New York to talk to press about the upcoming "Safe House." "Being on set was incredible, because it's a movie project that I've been with for years and believed in. Being able to stick with it is half the battle," he says of the comic movie.
In "R.I.P.D.," directed by Robert Schwentke ("Red"), Reynolds plays the late police detective Nick Walker — otherwise known as Nick Cruz to readers of the original comic by Peter Lenkov. "It's not really even a full comic book series," the actor clarified. "It's just the one comic, the graphic novel."
In the fantasy crime thriller, which has a "Men In Black" vibe, Nick is dead — at least, that's how he remembers it — and teams up with another deceased detective, a gunslinger from the Old West (played by Jeff Bridges), to work for the elite task force, the Rest In Peace Department (hence the title), to track down the dead on Earth. (Due to overpopulation, some unsettled spirits haven't gone where they're supposed to, and are hiding out). Technically, R.I.P.D. officers (who are overseen by Mary-Louise Parker) aren't allowed to kill anyone living, and aren't supposed to interact with anyone from their previous lives, but Nick is haunted by the fact that he was murdered by another cop (played by Kevin Bacon), and can't let it go.
"I'm hoping to be able to work with all those people again," Reynolds said. "It could be a franchise. It certainly is set up, plot-wise, for a sequel. But nobody's signed on for that just yet. We would like it to be [a film series.]"
But don't get excited just yet. "R.I.P.D." is still a bit of way off, and won't hit theaters until June 28, 2013.