Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Mississippi Grind is one of the best films ever made about gambling. That is to say, it’s actually about losing, and that’s not a subject that drives people to the movies in droves. That’s not to say Mississippi Grind is boring; it’s a lively two-person film about two losers roaming the South in search of the ever-elusive jackpot. But as we see in the film, the rush of even a big win quickly wears off. Eventually, you return to your life and the chaos you’ve probably made of it (gamblers aren’t the most reliable spouses/parents), and the losing continues.

That’s basically the story of Mississippi Grind, which, not surprisingly, made it difficult to get the project financed. Yes, Boden and Fleck had a great script and could point to the rave reviews for their first two films, Half Nelson and Sugar, as proof that they potentially The film generated good box office returns throughout awards season (Ryan Gosling was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor), but financiers were unlikely to take a chance on such an uncommercial film unless they could lure in a reasonably lucrative name.

When Boden and Fleck first sought funding for Mississippi Grinding, they cast Ben Mendelsohn in the role of penniless protagonist Gerry. He was perfect because he’s both handsome and naturally downcast. He looks like he knows what it means to lose. But although Mendelsohn was in high demand after his bravura performance in David Michôd’s 2010 crime drama Animal Kingdom, he wasn’t a box office hit in the U.S. Because Boden and Fleck, who place a high value on realism, wanted to shoot on location in the South (sometimes in running casinos), their budget would have been prohibitively high unless they found a co-lead who exuded movie-star charisma.

And then they hit a shiny jackpot named Ryan Reynolds.

In a 2015 interview with IndieWire, two months before the film was canceled from a domestic release (via the fledgling A24 network), Fleck talked about the frustration of landing a great actor who seemed on the verge of breaking into stardom but wasn’t yet well-known enough to get backers to pay him.

According to Fleck:

“I think Ben Mendelsohn’s name and face alone can generate significant funding in the next year or maybe even after that. But back then, people outside Australia hardly knew him. He was just kind of an interesting character actor who would pop up every now and then.”

The film’s fortunes changed dramatically when they found their charismatic Curtis to balance Mendelsohn’s much more reserved Gerry. “It was not a no-brainer, but then, fortunately, Ryan Reynolds came along,” said Fleck. “And he Is a movie star, he did initiate the financing. And he is great too.”

Although Reynolds should have been a big enough name to give the film a strong opening in the U.S., it played no more than 46 theaters in fall 2015 and flopped with a domestic gross of $423,000 (and nowhere near its $7.1 million budget). Had A24 waited until spring of the following year, it could have capitalized on Reynolds’ breakout superstardom with Deadpool. But perhaps now that the whole world is going crazy for Deadpool & Wolverine, Reynolds’ fans will finally get a chance to see his best film yet.