In news no one saw coming, one of Ryan Reynolds’ critically panned films is getting a surprise sequel almost 10 years after its box office debut. In a surprising turn of events from Universal Pictures, the notorious box office flop, R.I.P.D., based on the comic book of the same name by Peter M. Lenkov, will receive a sequel heading straight to home video. The buddy-cop comedy, which found Reynolds, a murdered Boston police detective recruited to join the afterlife’s “Rest in Peace Department” with Jeff Bridges, received poor criticism across the board when it was released in 2013. At the time, Rotten Tomatoes cited it as “too dim-witted and formulaic to satisfy” audiences.
According to Bloody Disgusting, the Univeral Pictures-produced film will be called R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned. But though not much is known about the apparent sequel to the supernatural action comedy, it has a PG-13 rating and features sequences of violence, language, disturbing images and some crude, sexual references. However, the plot remains mum. Per its IMDb, the film is directed by Paul Leyden and stars Richard Fleeshman (Coronation Street), Jake Choi (American Housewife), Tilly Cooper (Eastenders), and Stephanie Levi-Johnson (The Spanish Princess). It is unclear if Reynolds or Bridges will appear in the movie or if their characters are referenced.
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The first movie, which was fairly liked by a few, starred Reynolds and Bridges as two cops rerouted after death by the Rest in Peace Department (R.I.P.D.) to protect and serve the living from increasingly destructive spirits hiding among the unsuspecting on Earth. However, when the pair discover a plot that could end life, the new partners begrudgingly work together to restore the cosmic balance.
With Reynolds having done prior work in comic book adaptations like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Green Lantern and most successfully, Deadpool, he told Collider in 2013 that films founded on the beloved genre will always be something that piques the viewer’s curiosity, similarly to how he felt about R.I.P.D. at the time. “Comic books, I don’t read a lot of them. It’s such a huge part of the industry these days,” he told the outlet. “It’s a legit genre unto itself. It’s the same as most actors will end up in a drama at some point; at some point, you’re gonna end up in a comic book movie it seems like these days. I’ve been lucky to be a part of a few of them. But this isn’t really a comic book. It’s a graphic novel, which I read after I read the script. I just thought that the world was really cool, seeing these two lawmen who were of completely different eras and modalities, and how they do things, kind of come together and clash, that’s what I thought was kind of cool.”
