How is ‘Free Guy’ Dominating the Box Office?!?
Free Guy is a bona-fide hit, and it’s proved that Disney has weathered very well with their theatrical releases through the pandemic. Taking the top weekend spot for the second week in a row on a better-than-stable 34% drop, it proves to be a hit with the audiences in a way few new properties (and even some established ones) have not.
But what’s the secret to its success? Let’s speculate on a few points as to why this movie, with a great concept and somewhat bland execution, is dominating the box office in a way few other movies have been.
I think the main reason is because of its star, Ryan Reynolds. As you can read in my review, I felt like this wasn’t a perfect role for him, his sarcasm and cynicism seemingly lying behind every smile or good-natured gesture in the film. I realize I’m alone in this – most reviewers seem to love him in it, and I will concede that he’s not bad in the role, he just doesn’t always come off as genuine (for example, there’s a line in the film where he goes to his fish and, in a very Ryan Reynolds/Deadpool-y way says “Hey fishy, have a great fucking day” – which just makes it seem like Ryan Reynolds being Ryan Reynolds and not really being Guy). However, Reynolds has a clear brand with a large fanbase and he, and the marketing team at 20th Century Studios (and, to a lesser extent, Disney (who were probably hands off)) know very well by this point how to market a movie to appeal to the Ryan Reynolds crowd.
In fact, I would say the second major factor to its success was the marketing campaign. Not only did they market this as an effective Ryan Reynolds film, they marketed it as a film that will appeal to the inner video gamer (through a Deadpool-esque marketing exploit) as well as the non-video gamers (by making a lot of the material in the trailer just videogame-y enough to assuage the non-gamers’ fear of technobabble). The marketing campaign also does a good job of hiding the very bland, very boring non-Guy “B-plot” of the movie – the corporate part that is fairly generic and boring and really holds the movie back, which helped emphasize the next reason the movie is doing well.
The idea for the film is the perfect storm of familiar and unique, and the movie itself capitalizes on this in some very good ways. For a movie that looks like it would be a cynical revenge-type movie – the AI is taking back the world from rude and obnoxious players – it does it in a very wholesome way. Guy doesn’t want to punish the players, he wants to save his friends. The mix of Matrix-style truth learning in a fun, sandbox-style video-game world (which the VFX department has a field day with placing easter eggs in) that allows for a good amount more latitude in over-the-top action while still being family friendly is like the perfect movie pitch if I’d ever seen one. The idea was novel enough that it whetted the thirst for moviegoers who had seen too many sequels or remakes and yearned for something new-yet-not-too-new.
Fourth, the movie is very wholesome. It’s “the feelgood movie of the year” type of wholesome in a way that some other movies wish they could be and other movies actively rail against. It’s a comfort food movie – it doesn’t challenge you too much (which is one of its shortcomings, especially in the “real world” side of things) and leaves you with a warm feeling on the inside (if it does it’s job right for you, which Reynolds and Howie do their best to push by the end of the movie). Additionally, it’s PG-13 – a rating that has become synonymous with the most successful for drawing in a big crowd.
Finally, I have to wonder how much the theatrical-only push had in helping it move. I said in my analysis of The Suicide Squad’s box office failure that people had a choice to see it in theaters or watch it at home on the same day and the same time. I go back and forth on how much effect it had on the box office, but we can use Free Guy as a bit of a barometer to say that, maybe, same day streaming is probably poison for returns. I think there hasn’t been enough research done on it. I would say that those who went to see it in its initial run – with an opening of $28 million – were probably those fans who wanted to see it, and the ones who went in its second week – $18 million – are the ones who may not have been able to make it out that first week or may have stayed home and streamed it instead of going to the theater. Like I said, it’s hard to tell and it’s a bit nebulous.
So there you go: my speculation as to why Free Guy is succeeding in a way few other movies have during this COVID time. I do want to say that the irony of this movie – about a bunch of independent artists who want to express themselves with a unique and creative product who are being brought down by a corporation who is only interested in churning out sequel after sequel while squeezing their consumers dry on money – feels like it’s lost on a lot of people who are going to see this, especially since Disney has already green-lit the sequel.
