Ryan Reynolds was cast in Red Notice on the strength of his cameo in the Fast and Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw. Red Notice, which stars Reynolds with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Gal Gadot, follows a notorious art thief (Reynolds) and an FBI profiler (The Rock) who recruits him to take down an even more notorious art thief (Gadot). The film, which was directed by Skyscraper and Central Intelligence's Rawson Marshall Thurber and also stars Chris Diamontopolous and Ritu Arya, dropped on Netflix on Friday, November 12. This followed Red Notice's disastrous one-week limited theatrical run, which was on track to earn less than $1 million, though Netflix still hasn't reported the result.
Ryan Reynolds and The Rock had previously teamed on Hobbs & Shaw, which featured the former in a cameo early on in the film. Reynolds plays Locke, a CIA agent who is hired as the handler for Hobbs who sends him on his latest mission. Although his scenes are spread throughout the movie, they generally only take place in one location, belying the fact that he was only able to spend a day or two on set. This cameo likely came together because the film was directed by David Leitch, who had previously helmed Deadpool 2.
Speaking with Screen Rant, producer Hiram Garcia explained how Hobbs & Shaw influenced the process of getting Reynolds on board for Red Notice. He says that, serendipitously, right when they were starting to really dig down on the question of who should play Booth in the film, he was present on set during the filming of Reynolds and Johnson's scene together in Hobbs & Shaw. He thought to himself, "Oh my God, these guys are incredible together," and he says that The Rock felt the same way, the process of filming that scene getting him "on board as well." Read the full quote below:
I think we always say as a producer, you dream of having one giant mega star in a movie. So to have three, it's such an honor and going in, ironically, Rawson had always pitched Gal as the Bishop. He always had her as a prototype and when he would get to the Bishop, he'd say, "Imagine Gal Gadot coming in here doing what she does." And then for Booth, we were always, there was a bit of reconfiguring as we were just trying to figure out actually what that character was. We knew we had this great partner for the Hartley character, but we were always trying to decide how we wanted it played. And as we were starting to hone in on it at the time DJ and I were shooting Hobbs & Shaw in London and Ryan was coming in for his cameo.
And I just remember watching them together, being like, "Oh my God, these guys are incredible together." Just one little scene sitting across each other in a diner was fire. And I remember calling our partners and just being like, "I think we have the guy." I mean, what these two are doing right now is so good. And DJ was so fired up after that cameo where he was on board as well. And so we focused on Ryan for that. We were very fortunate when we shared the script with him. He jumped right on board. And same thing with Gal, it usually takes a little bit of finagling when you're dealing with stars of that caliber, but the script and the concept was so fun that they both jumped on instantly. And once we got them on board, things just started rolling. It was a very fast turnaround from when we had pitched the movie to when we were able to get it going. And so sometimes movies just have really good energy like that. You can get buried in development for 10 years. Luckily, this wasn't one of those situations and it worked out pretty well.
Strangely, Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson hadn't worked on a film together whatsoever before that cameo. Both stars have a similar charisma and love of sardonic humor that it seems like a perfect fit that should have been explored much earlier. However, it's clear the two get along and are eager to collaborate more. Johnson even had a voice-only cameo in Reynold's hit film Free Guy earlier this year, returning the favor.
Red Notice is now officially on the Netflix service and usurping the #1 slot for the week. Despite its lackluster performance in theaters, it was inevitable that the combination of A-listers the cast boasts would propel it to more or less instant popularity when it dropped on streaming. It's a strange fact of Hollywood that, without Donovan Leitch arranging that little cameo, it's possible that none of this would have happened the way it did.