Ryan Reynolds Pokémon Stunt Delivers a Whopping 4 Million Views ... So Far

Actor Ryan Reynolds, the voice of the adorable yellow rodent-like creature in the upcoming Pokémon film, has pulled off an epic social stunt to gain attention for the movie, which opens Friday.

“Reynolds appeared to have found a pirated pre-release copy of Pokémon Detective Pikachu — and then made the ill-advised move to share it with his 13 million-plus fans on Twitter,” Variety reported, then added “Of course, not really.”

Um…. Attn @DetPikachuMovie @warnerbros https://t.co/UF7qYtKOYV

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) May 7, 2019

The tweet, purportedly to alert Warner Bros/Legendary, suggested that Reynolds had somehow discovered a pirated, pre-released copy of Pokémon Detective Pikachu. Posted on YouTube, the opening minutes of the video, at first, appear like the real deal, but then the next 102 minutes show just shaking his groove thing.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, we were all adorably rickrolled by Ryan Reynolds. More than 4 million views came in during the first 14 hours after the film was posted. The tweet got 29,000+ retweets and close to 105,000 likes from the actors 13.6 million followers.

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“For Hollywood studios, seeding such bogus copies of their films is an occasional anti-piracy tactic — designed to draw search-engine traffic away from other pirate sites and/or to frustrate would-be freeloaders,” Variety reported.

This hasn’t been Reynolds only stunt to help generate interest for the film. In February, he posted a hilarious spoof on how he was able to land the voice of a Pokémon. In the video he claims: “You know, I lived it. I breathed it. I became the character. I spent the entire year as Detective Pikachu. I read about him. I live at his height. I tried to lose 182 pounds to match his weight until doctors intervened.”

Pokémon is one of the most popular game franchises ever that includes video games, an ongoing anime series, 22 animated features, mobile games, trading cards, toys and more. Pokémon Detective Pikachu is already projected to have a $160 million global launch this weekend, pika-pikaing all over the competition, including the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog flick, whose first trailer last week caused wide panic among fans of the video game character. (Seriously, who thought anyone wanted to see Sonic with human teeth?)

Of course, Detective Pikachu isn’t the first character Reynolds has embodied in an all-out marketing campaign. For both Deadpool and Deadpool 2, he suited up as the Merc With a Mouth in every channel possible, doing everything from dancing with Celine Dion to taking over Stephen Colbert’s monologue.