Ryan Reynolds questions the Hollywood logic that any successful movie should automatically spawn follow-ups – including Free Guy.
In a refreshing take, Free Guy star Ryan Reynolds has popped up to wonder aloud whether the splashy action comedy needs a follow-up. The first film was one of the pandemic’s successful cinema release stories, making well over $300m at the global box office at a time when takings were inconsistent to say the least. Audiences seemed to warm to it and the film managed to pull off a breezy and fun take on satirising open world ‘murder-thon’ video game titles like the Grand Theft Auto series.
Still, there will have been more than a few people who having been mildly entertained, would have left the cinema happy to never revisit Free Guy again. The film did something entertaining with a fairly novel idea and in doing so, offered a couple of hours of fun. Reynolds has appeared to recognise that returning to the world of Free Guy shouldn’t necessarily be a given, despite talking up the possibility of a sequel upon the film’s successful release back in 2021.
“There is the potential to do a sequel to Free Guy, which would be fun. I would love it,” said Reynolds. “But also like, does everything (“clucking” – Ed) have to be a sequel? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s okay to just do a movie and have it kick ass and then everyone go home. So you know, there’s a bit of a push and pull there, resisting the urge to just immediately say ‘oh, doing a sequel will validate the first one.’ No, the first movie validates the first one and then you can leave it at that. So I don’t know, we’re still talking about it.”
We can’t argue with that logic. Director Shawn Levy said something to the same effect at the end of last year, revealing that Disney and 20th Century Studios executives want a follow-up very badly which is unsurprising. However, with the two key creatives expressing misgivings about the possibility, there’s a chance that it doesn’t happen and that might not be a bad thing at all. We’ll keep you posted on this story as we hear more.
Variety
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