While Free Guy star Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy have played a little coy when it comes to talking about a sequel, 20th Century Studios’ president Steve Asbell has been spilling the beans on just where a sequel currently stands. In recent interviews, both Levy and Reynolds have said that there could be a sequel if the right story and script comes along, but according to Asbell, the Free Guy 2 script is only “days away” from being completed. That means we could be seeing a Free Guy follow-up arriving a lot sooner than anyone anticipated.
Asbell sat down to talk to The Hollywood Reporter recently, and discussed a lot about the future of 20th Century Studios, including projects like a fourth Planet of the Apes movie, Avatar, and a big push for Hulu exclusive content. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, the subject of Free Guy and its sequel potential was brought up. He said:
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While this is good news for fans of the Reynolds vehicle, Asbell also hinted that it would not be the end of the franchise. While discussing the plan to have ten movies a year heading to Hulu each year from 2023, he was asked whether all of the big movies would still be theatrical releases, to which he replied:
“We’re awaiting a script that is days away. It’s a fantastic story.”
Free Guy Provided Reynolds with a Mid-Pandemic Hit Last Year, and Clearly, Sequels Are in The Cards
Free Guy became one of the first pandemic movies to stick to a theatrical only release when it arrived in the middle of 2021. With other movies choosing to split themselves between cinema releases and same-day on-demand options, Free Guy took a huge gamble in not opting for a Day and Date release, but it paid off. The film grossed over $330 million at the box office, more than trebling its $100 million budget.
“We do have original films of scale in development that we haven’t announced yet, and it will be whatever feels right for that number of films per year. What’s great about all of this is that we have both. We have this explosive new streaming mandate to pursue, yet we also have titles that we can make [for theatrical]. We have more Avatar movies coming, we have more Free Guy movies coming. We’re going to be pretty busy.”
As the movie arrived on Disney+ last month, Shawn Levy provided an update on the progress of the sequel, but he seemed to suggest that fans could have a lengthy wait. He told Collider:
Now it seems that the script is almost ready to go, and that means that despite both Levy and Reynolds having busy schedules right now, they may be getting back into Free Guy earlier than even they expected. We will find out more in the near future.
“I’ve definitely gotten that phone call. I don’t know how to quantify the how much, but that exact phone call that you just basically paraphrased, that’s a call. I’ve gotten a few of those in the past several months. So there is definitely real interest there. But to Ryan’s point, we knew. We had such a clear idea of the tone, the story, the details of Free Guy, and we both made a few sequels in our lives, and so we know how hard it is to make a worthy one. And when we feel confident that’s the kind we’ll make, then we’ll make it.”
