Free Guy
Free Guy is a 2021 American action comedy film directed and produced by Shawn Levy from a screenplay by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, and a story by Lieberman. The film stars Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Lil Rel Howery, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Joe Keery, and Taika Waititi. It tells the story of a bank teller who discovers that he is a non-player character in a massively multiplayer online game who then partners with a player to find evidence that a gaming company's CEO stole the player's game's source code. Lieberman began writing the script in 2016, which was acquired by 20th Century Fox shortly after. Levy passed on the script, but reconsidered after Hugh Jackman introduced him to Reynolds, resulting in him leaving the film adaptation of the Uncharted video game he had been developing. The acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney made Free Guy one of the first films produced by 20th Century to continue its production under Disney's ownership. Filming took place in Massachusetts and California between May and July 2019. After the film was delayed two times by the COVID-19 pandemic, it premiered at the 74th Locarno Film Festival on August 10, 2021, and was released theatrically in the United States three days later on August 13 in RealD 3D, IMAX, 4DX and Dolby Cinema formats by 20th Century Studios. It grossed $331.5 million worldwide. The film received generally positive reviews from critics for the concept, comparing it to science fiction films and action video games such as Ready Player One, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Grand Theft Auto, The Lego Movie, and Fortnite. The film received a nomination for Best Visual Effects at the 94th Academy Awards.
Front of warm, dry gunfire... mixed with late afternoon stabbings... could leave you in the streets wet with the blood of innocents by early Tuesday night. What really is the difference between a light roast and a dark roast? Nobody knows. Don't have a good day, have a great day. Guy, can we talk? How does the sunglass girl know your name? I don't know. Keep walking. Come on, Guy! You know me. You know this.
Free Guy
Please, Guy, think. The ice cream, the swings? Oh, my Guy loves swings. At Free City Harbor Park, there's a great swing set there. - Have you been? - Yes. We had bubble gum ice cream. OMG, I love bubble gum ice cream! He loves the bubble gum ice cream. Yes, I know. We had it together, remember?
Free Guy
Hello? I might've found something. I've been going through Guy's code and there is something there, even now, after the wipe. What's the point? Guy was, like, a one-in-a-billion miracle. We can't replicate that. I tried, okay? You were right, it's over. No, Millie, Millie, you're not listening to me, all right? A reboot, it doesn't erase his AI coding. You literally would have to destroy the servers to do that. His AI is still there, it just needs to be accessed. I've seen him, Keys. He's forgotten everything. Just look at the trace log I sent you. It'll explain everything.
Free Guy
But he's still stuck in Free City. He's still stuck in this life, this loop. And, then, something changes. He comes to life. Why? And then I remembered. One of the characters from Life Itself was this guy that I nicknamed Lovelorn. And he was someone who was designed to never meet the right person. It was essentially the building blocks of the character. But he never stopped hoping that he would meet "the girl of his dreams". So I had to base this girl off of someone, and who better than the person that I was sitting next to every day? You. But then, one day, he meets you in Free City, and once he sees you he can never be the same. He was supposed to feel doomed, but instead, he feels alive until, eventually, he is alive.
Free Guy