Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy was a massive hit in just about every way. Not only was Free Guy adored by both critics and fans alike, but surpassing $300 million at the box office wasn’t too shabby either, especially for a film that was released during a global pandemic. It was no surprise when Reynolds announced that Disney wanted a sequel, and now, thanks to the visual effects team, we have an idea about what we can expect from the follow-up.
20th Century Studios' Free Guy is obviously rather effects-heavy, given the fact that it primarily takes place within a video game universe. The VFX team had a lot of creative freedom in constructing this world, using a slew of video games for inspiration. We can assume they’ll have a heavy hand in determining the direction that any sequels go in, and VFX Supervisor Bryan Grill told CinemaBlend the following about how he’d like to go about a sequel:
Well I mean, in a sequel, I'm partial, If you look at my resume, I like to work on a lot of destruction-type movies. My favorite movies, though, are like those seamless effects where you really can't tell. So how do we up Free City, you know, from a spectacle standpoint? So I'm all in, putting our heads together, coming up with those visuals. Because I can say that, just looking at the movie, this version of it, there's a lot going on. And how do you level up and raise the bar? You know, I’d like to find out.
So not only is Bryan Grill all-in, but he’s focused on creating seamless effects that look realistic for Free Guy 2. He’s right, there’s a lot going on in the video game world of Free City, and if they were able to up the ante in terms of the spectacle’s real-world look, that would be quite the feat.
But why stop with a sequel? VFX Supervisor Nikos Kalaitzidis also thinks that there’s potential for a spinoff within the Free Guy universe that’s primarily gameplay footage. He said this:
Well, a sequel or a spinoff? I always thought it would be great to grab all the gameplay and just come up with a completely, just animated version of Free City. In some ways, you know, like we had all these environments, we have all these characters. Maybe we could level up with the look of the characters one more time and just go ahead and just do a complete spin-off where it's 90%, you know, gameplay and 10% live-action, perhaps rather than vice versa.
Of course, nothing has been confirmed in the way of a Free Guy spinoff, but it sure is fun to speculate. An primarily animated spinoff could certainly be a fun way to expand this universe. In any case, once Ryan Reynolds comes off of his break from acting, we should start to see more official Free Guy sequel news come to light.
If you haven’t yet seen Free Guy or you’re hankering for a re-watch, there are a number of streaming options coming our way. As for what's in store for the 2022 movies releases, we also have you covered.
