Ryan Reynolds Celebrates Free Guy's Oscar Nomination

Ryan Reynolds is celebrating his breakout hit movie Free Guy receiving an Oscar nomination. After it was announced that Free Guy has received an Academy Award nomination in the category of "Best Visual Effects", Reynolds made sure to let the film's team of visual effects gurus feel the love. In a tweet Reynolds says "Congrats team #FreeGuyon the #Oscar nom! SWEN GILLBERG, BRYAN GRILL. NiKOS KALAITZIDIS AND DAN SUDICK". This Oscar nomination caps a successful run for Free Guy, since it hit theaters in summer 2021. 

This particular nomination is big win for Free Guy – and certiainly major validation for its VFX team. When ComicBook.com spoke to Free Guy Digital Domain VFX Supervisor Nikos Kalaitzidis, he touched upon just how difficult it was to achieve the real world/game world looks, in a way viewers would both recognize and respond to:  

"At first, we actually wanted to go really photo-real, because that's where all the games are going right now. It's almost as if you're playing a real feature film game," Kalaitzidis explained. "But it appeared that, when we see it on the monitor, it could have been confusing if, was that really a game, or is that actually live-action? So that's when we had to change the style and dumb it down in a way, to go back to something more of a Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto sort of style, to understand what this should be. So when you see it as a viewer on someone's monitor, you could clearly, distinctively understand that it is  gameplay and not live-action.

In fact, Free Guy's opening sequence alone (showcasing a gamer going wild in the world of the "Free City" game) took an entire year to produce: 

"It's just a big, big shot. That shot was 3000 frames," explained Swen Gillberg, VFX supervisor for Free Guy. "Your average shot is something like three seconds long, which is 75 frames. And so, 3000 versus 75. And then, that particular shot was made up of 10 different plates. We had plates of Pittsburgh, Boston. Two type of crane shots. We had a stunt vehicle to do 360 background plates. We had live action, Russian arm car chases. It was just made up of so many different pieces."

"And I can contest to how hard that shot was," Brian Grill, Scanline VFX supervisor, confirmed. "Maybe... on some Zoom calls, in dailies, heard screaming and cursing in the background. But I can't tell you if it's true or not. But... you know."

Well, all the stress and challenge was worth it: congrats to Free Guy on its Oscar nomination. 

Free Guy will stream on Disney+ starting February 23rd