R.I.P.D.
2013 film directed by Robert Schwentke

R.I.P.D. (marketed as R.I.P.D.: Rest in Peace Department) is a 2013 American supernatural action comedy film starring Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds. The film was directed by Robert Schwentke from a screenplay by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, based on the 1999 comic book R.I.P.D. by Peter M. Lenkov and Lucas Marangon. The film also stars Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker, Stéphanie Szostak, and Marisa Miller. The story follows a murdered detective who is recruited to work for the eponymous afterlife agency—whose duty is to capture souls that evade judgement—where he is partnered with an Old West lawman and discovers a mysterious conspiracy.
The film was originally set to be released on June 28, 2013 in the United States by Universal Pictures, but was pushed back to July 19, 2013. The film underperformed at the box office, grossing $78.3 million on a $130‒154 million budget, and received generally negative reviews from critics. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 29, 2013. A direct-to-video prequel, R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned, was released on November 15, 2022.
Plot
Boston Police Detectives Nick Walker and Bobby Hayes steal a stash of gold during a drug bust. Nick regrets the theft and tells Hayes that he will turn it in as evidence.
“R.I.P.D.” enters the record as 2013 film directed by Robert Schwentke. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what film, directed and Robert can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“R.I.P.D.” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, film, directed and Robert provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3012553. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 1999 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “R.I.P.D.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.