A few days prior to the release of Pokémon Detective Pikachu , Ryan Reynolds sent his 13.6 million followers into a frenzy when he tweeted what claimed to be a leak of the “full” movie.
The actor’s tweet featured an embed of a tweet from another account called Inspector Pikachu, which was created this month. The tweet containing what was believed to be a leaked copy of the full Detective Pikachu was the first and only tweet on the account.
Unfortunately for fans who got excited by the thought to watch the movie before its theatrical release, Reynolds’ intent wasn’t to spread joy or blast piracy on Twitter. Instead, the 42-year-old actor appeared to have channeled his inner Deadpool as the video turned out to be nothing more than a prank.
When fans clicked the link, it forwarded them to a video on YouTube which appears to be a pirated leaked copy of the movie. With “R. Reynolds” stamped near the left corner of the clip, it starts out playing an opening scene from the movie. Roughly a minute into the clip, the main character hears music playing before the video pans over to the CGI Pikachu dancing.
Unfortunately, the video clip was nothing more than the Rickroll prank that never dies as it featured the yellow CGI creature dancing to Rick Astley’s 1987 song, “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Um…. Attn @DetPikachuMovie @warnerbros https://t.co/UF7qYtKOYV
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) May 7, 2019
While newer generations of Pokémon may have not recognized the prank, there was a time where people would send links to each other via text and social media. The links would be disguised as something only later to be nothing more than Astley’s, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” It was a prank that was referred to as being “Rickrolled.”
Posted on Twitter four days ago, Ryan’s tweet has accumulated over 30,000 retweets and over 110,000 likes. Over 2,200 Twitter users also took to the comments to tell Reynolds how they felt about his prank.
Ryan Reynolds leaks entire Detective Pikachu movie online https://t.co/JBTdi1a7uS pic.twitter.com/r2xalRp966
— CNET (@CNET) May 8, 2019
One Twitter user sarcastically thanked Reynolds for creating a situation where they were stuck watching the nearly two-hour clip of Pikachu dancing because of how much their infant enjoyed it.
“Thanks a lot Ryan. This is the only thing that has stopped my 6 month old from crying tonight. It has been playing for the past 2 hours. You jerk. You look adorable in this video by the way. Freaking adorable. I hope youre happy,” the Twitter user joked.
In good spirits, many of Ryan’s fans thanked him for such a great leak of the movie.
