Fan-Favorite Ryan Reynolds Franchise Gets Disappointing Update

It’s been three years since the Shawn Levy directed, Ryan Reynolds starring Free Guy hit theaters, quickly becoming a critical and box office hit amid a movie landscape still dealing with the COVID pandemic, but fans hoping for a sequel just got a very disappointing update. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, 20th Century Studios executive Steve Asbell offered updates on many of the studio’s projects and franchises including Free Guy and when asked what the status of Free Guy 2 was, he had a pretty simple answer: nothing is in the works yet as Levy and Reynolds don’t yet have an idea.

“Not yet,” Asbell said. “[Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds] have to come up with an idea. And they’re just busy.”

Released in 2021, Free Guy follows a bank teller (Reynolds) who discovers that he’s not actually a real person but a non-player character in a massively multiplayer online game. He ends up teaming up with one of the game’s players to find proof that a gaming company’s CEO stole the player’s game’s source code. In addition to Reynolds, the film stars Jodie Comer, Lil Rel Howery, Joe Keery, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Taika Waititi. The film was a box office success, with a worldwide box office of $331.5 million on a budget of around $125 million. The film’s success led to early discussion of a sequel, but in November of last year, Levy said that the sequel was a “big maybe”.

“It’s been floated, it floats, because Ryan and I love that movie,” Levy said at the time. “I’d say it’s a big maybe, but boy it would sure make us happy.”

But while making more Free Guy movies would make them happy, Asbell isn’t wrong when he said that Levy and Reynolds are busy. The pair just released Deadpool & Wolverine this summer with that film having been a massive box office success. Reynolds has a number of other projects on deck, including Animal Friends, currently scheduled for release next summer as well as his multiple business ventures. As for Levy, he’s working on the fifth and final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things.  Levy has also previously indicated that there is another hurdle when it comes to Free Guy 2: the massive success of last year’s Barbie movie. Like Free Guy, Barbie centered around a fictional character in a fictional world coming to self-awareness, something that Levy said would mean that Free Guy 2 would need to be different from other movies.

Do We Really Need Free Guy 2?

While the news that there currently aren’t plans for a Free Guy sequel is certainly disappointing for fans of the film, it is also possible that we don’t really need a Free Guy 2. Sequels and franchise films have been a major part of the box office landscape in recent years, but they don’t always live up to expectation. More than that, there is frequently plenty of discourse about the need for more original movies in Hollywood that aren’t simply sequels or part of larger franchises, even original franchises. There’s also something to be said for the standalone film — and there’s no guarantee that a sequel would be as successful as the original in this case as it is. Three years later, the world is in a different place than it during that specific time in COVID pandemic. It might be a situation where Free Guy is best served as being a one and done.

Free Guy is currently streaming on Disney+.