Ryan Reynolds Claims Free Guy Is His “Favorite Movie” He’s Ever Done, Reveals Magazine Covers

With some theaters on the verge of opening back up, Total Film magazine’s cover story is about a movie that its star calls an “absolute fastball of joy.” That would be Free Guy, an upcoming film from Night at the Museum and Stranger Things filmmaker Shawn Levy. In the film, Ryan Reynolds plays Guy, a non-player character in an open-world game who breaks from his script one day and accidentally kills a gunman who is trying to rob his bank. Faced with the realization that everything in reality is not what he believes it to be, Guy finds himself working with some unexpected allies.

Thanks to a code developed by programmers Milly (Jodie Comer) and Keys (Joe Keery) inserted into Free City by the publisher Antoine (Taika Waititi), Guy becomes aware of his world being a video game, and takes steps to make himself the hero, creating a race against time to save the game before the developers can shut it down. And, apparently, this game Reynolds’s favorite role to date.

You can see the cover of the latest Total Film, and Reynolds’s tweet, below.

The film, produced by Berlanti Productions (the folks behind the Arrowverse and more DC properties), had a pretty significant presence at New York Comic Con last fall where, among other things, the cast and crew released a short video poking fun at Green Lantern — a film in which Reynolds and Waititi appeared, and which was co-written by Greg Berlanti.

Levy, who has experience in trying to make video game movies having previously been attached to the long-churnning Uncharted film (itself also delayed by the coronavirus), previously broke down the premise and what appealed about it to he and Reynolds. Simialr to movies like Wreck-It Ralph and Ready Player One, it has no limits.

“On a very literal level, Free Guy is about Guy, who’s a bank teller. He works in a bank, and his bank gets robbed 17 times in a day, and eventually he realizes that’s weird and not normal,” Levy said, via the Hollywood Reporter. “Ryan and I have talked about Free Guy as a superhero origin story without the cape and tights and the IP. If you were living in a video game and could master the system, your powers would be limitless.”

Reynolds compared his excitement for the movie to the release of the first Deadpool film.

“I haven’t been this fully immersed, engaged and pumped [about] something since Deadpool,” Reynolds said, “It spoke to the moment in some way.”

Free Guy is currently slated to hit theaters on December 11.