Budapest Mayor Denies Reynolds Call Rescued 'Mayday' Scene

Budapest's mayor says his office, not a Ryan Reynolds phone call, saved a key 'Mayday' shoot in Heroes' Square, contradicting the film's directors.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein said their massive Soviet-era May Day parade sequence — 1,000 extras, 1,000 crewmembers, a dozen Soviet tanks and a custom-built nuclear launch vehicle — was nearly scrapped when Budapest withdrew permission to film in Heroes' Square, which was doubling for Moscow's Red Square. The directors told THR that Reynolds personally called Mayor Gergely Karácsony to get the shoot back on. The Hollywood Reporter quotes Goldstein calling Reynolds "the 500-pound elephant when we need him" and Reynolds himself saying fame lets him "get people on the phone that you otherwise couldn't."

Per Entertainment Weekly, a statement from Mayor Karácsony's office says neither the mayor nor Reynolds negotiated directly, and that "the necessary discussions were not conducted between the film stars and the Mayor." The office suggests "memories may have become slightly mixed up," though the mayor later visited the set and met Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh. A source close to production told EW that a producer negotiated with the mayor's chief of staff, with Reynolds joining part of the meeting by FaceTime. The office also noted the mayor "is a great admirer of Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare adaptations."

The Hollywood Reporter frames Reynolds as the decisive fixer; Entertainment Weekly's account from the mayor's office credits routine negotiations between the production company and city staff, with Reynolds present only by video call. Both accounts agree on the verifiable substrate: the scene involved Soviet tanks rolling through one of Budapest's busiest hubs, and the city felt obliged to reassure residents it was not, as the mayor's office put it, "a sign of some dramatic turn in world politics."

'Mayday,' the 1980s Cold War action comedy starring Reynolds as a downed American pilot and Kenneth Branagh as a Top Gun-loving ex-KGB operative, arrived on Apple TV on September 4, per The Hollywood Reporter. THR reports the film matched the directors' Game Night test-screening scores and holds an 81 percent critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The mayor's office, per Entertainment Weekly, says it looks forward to the Budapest premiere and would welcome the cast and crew back. Daley and Goldstein are now attached to write, and possibly direct, Paramount's new Star Trek movie.