After years of waiting, Ryan Reynolds' comedy action film, Free Guy, premiered last year and was met with both critical acclaim and commercial success. The movie, which starred Reynolds as an NPC in a popular online video game who gains sentience and ends up being an unlikely hero, grossed $331.5 million against an estimated $125 million budget. Although this is not an astronomical amount by any means, the fact that the movie pulled in as much despite the COVID-19 lockdowns was impressive and immediately led to a sequel.
Unfortunately, ever since Reynolds confirmed that a sequel was coming, neither Disney nor 20th Century Studios has revealed more information about Free Guy 2 - until now.
20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell shared with THR that the script for Free Guy 2 is almost done. Asbell explained that the studio is "awaiting a script that is days away", describing it as a "fantastic story." In addition, Asbell let it on that there are "more Free Guy movies coming", implying that Reynolds is now the star of at least two Disney-owned franchises with Deadpool officially joining the MCU.
Unfortunately, even if the script for Free Guy 2 is done this month, fans shouldn't expect Reynolds to have time to work on the film until at least 2023 if not 2024. Reynolds' next film, Netflix's The Adam Project, sees Reynolds reunite with Shawn Levy.
After this, the Free Guy star is expected to reveal more Deadpool 3 news soon following an earlier tease and months after Reynolds mentioned that the third Deadpool movie would start filming this year.
Finally, Netflix announced back in January its plans to shoot back-to-back sequels to Red Notice, which set new viewership records for the streaming giant last year.
TLDR; Free Guy 2 won't be here anytime soon.
The good news is that Free Guy is the ideal franchise for Disney's path going forward. Although Disney has meticulously maintained its branding and image over the years, the House of Mouse will have to make compromises if it intends to capitalize on the ever-changing market. To that end, Disney already made changes to its streaming platform in light of the arrival of Netflix's slate of very unDisney-like Marvel shows.
As Free Guy tiptoes the line between family-friendly and PG-13 movies, a sequel and spin-offs, as well as other future installments, all represent an opportunity for Disney to experiment with what works best for the company going forward.
Speaking of the future, Asbell appears confident in Disney's ability to generate interest and hype. In the same THR interview, Asbell doubled down on Avatar 2's 2022 release date, proudly saying that Disney will "do an incredible job" bringing audiences back more than a decade after the first Avatar movie was released.
