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Justin Theroux Exuding ‘Wannabe Energy’ as He Attempts to Emulate Idol Ryan Reynolds’ Success
Justin Theroux has a real swagger in his step these days as he looks to take his career to the next level – and a source says he’s become quietly obsessed with emulating his career idol Ryan Reynolds, a longtime friend of the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star exclusively tells In Touch.
“Look, if you ask Justin, he was doing the Ryan Reynolds thing long before Ryan was, especially on his signature film Tropic Thunder,” the source says.
Justin, 53, cowrote the star-studded movie along with Ben Stiller and Etan Cohen and “was the mastermind behind the viral marketing stunts on that movie, even though his part on-camera was tiny,” the insider explains.
Tropic Thunder roared to success upon release and is still considered a cult classic, thanks to a marketing campaign that saw the principal actors performing sketches on American Idol and at the MTV Video Music Awards that year.
The leads also took the comedic war film to U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton for a screening exclusively for service members and their families, with Justin heading up the subversive plan to set up fake websites for in-movie references and even a fake documentary about the development of the picture.
As the American Psycho actor attempts to recreate some of that magic, his hero, Ryan, 47, has been racking up the wins as of late. His most recent project, Deadpool & Wolverine, in which he stars alongside Hugh Jackman, has nearly broken into the top 20 highest grossing films of all time.
While that certainly speaks to the actor’s star power, the real success was the movie’s ad campaign, which was unrivaled in scope for an R-rated movie and headed up by Ryan and his company, Maximum Effort Productions.
The Proposal star was the heart of the campaign right from the get go, similar to Deadpool nine years ago, which was a change of pace for Fox domestic marketing chief Marc Weinstock.
“I’ve never taken ownership like this before,” Ryan told The Hollywood Reporter in October 2016 about his earlier foray into the marketing game promoting the first Deadpool film. “I could email Marc or anyone on his team at three in the morning with pitches and ideas, and somehow a response would come back within 10 or 15 minutes.”
It’s no wonder why Justin, who has also broadened his scope in his upcoming film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, is now “in full Ryan Reynolds mode,” the source says. “It shows.”
“He did help out on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and he is an idea factory, but the ‘wannabe energy’ is palpable.”
But the insider suggests that following Ryan’s playbook step by step isn’t the best career move for The Leftovers star.
“Justin needs to find his own lane instead of following in the footsteps of his more successful peers,” the source argues.
“Justin is always chasing somebody because he’s so heavily invested in his career and his personal reputation and trying to up his game, but at the end of the day, it just feels like he’s trying too hard, and it’s kind of pathetic.”
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