Ryan Reynolds may grab headlines nowadays for his work with companies like Aviation Gin and his faux feud with Hugh Jackman, but he’s an actor first and foremost. Even there, the last several years have been quite good for him, from finally playing getting to play Deadpool and voicing Pikachu. However, for those of you who enjoyed watching Reynolds in the Netflix action movie 6 Underground, bad news: that outing was a one-and-done affair.
While Netflix is developing sequels to recently-released action movies like Extraction, The Old Guard and Army of the Dead, 6 Underground will not get a follow-up adventure. Here’s what the streaming service’s movie chief, Scott Stuber, had to say about the Ryan Reynolds-starring and Michael Bay-helmed movie to Variety:
We didn’t feel like we got there on that one creatively. It was a nice hit, but at the end of the day we didn’t feel like we nailed the mark to justify coming back again. There just wasn’t that deep love for those characters or that world.
Released on Netflix and in limited theaters on December 13, 2019, 6 Underground starred Ryan Reynolds playing an American billionaire and philanthropist simply identified as One who puts together a team of vigilantes to eliminate the world’s “untouchable” criminals and terrorists. 6 Underground’s cast also included Mélanie Laurent, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ben Hardy, Adria Arjona, Dave Franco and Corey Hawkins. Michael Bay directed off a script by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the same duo who wrote the first two Deadpool movies (the latter of which was penned with Reynolds).
When 6 Underground was announced in March 2018, the plan was for the Netflix movie to launch a franchise. However, upon hitting the streaming service and despite being viewed a lot of people, it was met with a lot of negative reception from critics, ranking at 36% on Rotten Tomatoes. General moviegoers were kinder to 6 Underground judging by its 60% Audience Score, but a little over a year and a half later, Scott Stuber and the other Netflix executives feel that it just wasn’t a big enough hit to warrant greenlighting a sequel. As such, this won’t join the ranks of Netflix’s burgeoning action franchises.
Though Ryan Reynolds’ time in the 6 Underground world is over, he isn’t done with Netflix by any means. This November, we’ll see him acting opposite Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot in Red Notice, which will follow an Interpol agent (Johnson) on a mission to apprehend the world’s greatest con artist (Reynolds) and the world’s greatest art thief (Gadot). Reynolds also shot The Adam Project for Netflix, which is about a man who travels back in time to get help from his younger self with confronting their deceased father.
Before either of these movies arrive, you can see Ryan Reynolds starring in Free Guy, which premieres in theaters on August 13. And while it’s been three years since we last saw him play Wade Wilson, Reynolds is also on track to reprise the Merc with the Mouth for Deadpool 3, which is being written by Bob’s Burgers duo Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin, and will be set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
