Ryan Reynolds is at the top of his game right now in Hollywood as Deadpool & Wolverine heads towards $1 billion at the box office globally. His A-list status is cemented, but the 47-year-old actor isn’t interested in resting on his laurels. He’s hoping to take a page from Tom Cruise’s playbook as a worldwide superstar.
Reynolds has found great success with his “full-fledged multi-media marketing company,” Maximum Effort Productions with his business partner, George Dewey. It’s allowed him to take his career to new heights and map out the creative and executive plans for each project. The only other person in Hollywood who is really doing this right now is Cruise. “Tom Cruise is the only other star who takes this much control of selling a movie,” a source told In Touch Weekly. “You can see how Ryan is patterning his strategy after Tom’s.”
While that seems like a smart plan, not everyone on the studio side loves this idea. “That’s a double-edged sword because he’s often sidelining studio marketing executives who do this for a living and studio publicists with decades of experience,” the insider added. Still, Reynolds and Cruise are making a lot of money for Hollywood, but there are always dangers that lurk with taking on too much power.
According to the Mirror, Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 8 faced major filming delays this spring when a $29 million submarine set piece malfunctioned. “They’re not happy as it puts production behind, which costs a lot of money per day,” a crew member notes. An In Touch Weekly source also revealed that the setback put “the weight of the world on [Cruise’s] shoulders” because there were “hundreds of millions of dollars on the line.” That puts a lot of pressure on someone like Cruise or Reynolds, who have to deliver big results for the enormous amounts of money invested.
While the first In Touch Weekly source seems to worry about Reynold’s reported ego saying that “it’s Ryan’s way or the highway,” they can’t complain about the box office. So, it’s why Cruise’s formula for success is something Reynolds is more than willing to emulate.
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