‘Free Guy’ Is Really Leaning Into Movie Release Uncertainty
By George Robbins
Nowadays movie studios are not quite sure of when they want to release their new films due to the pandemic. This isn’t too much of a surprise given what we have already seen with the movie theater market within the past month or so. Now that theaters are opened up again, we expected them to at least get some kind of business to warrant companies to put out even more films. Unfortunately this did not end up happening for a couple of reasons. Those reasons being the fact that theaters are enclosed spaces that people sit still in for hours with many other people which creates a huge risk for spreading infection. Also, and partly due to the first reason, many domestic theaters are thinking of closing again until things get safer out there.
Now that we are unsure of just when theaters will be able to get back to true functionality, studios haven’t exactly been trying to put their stuff out there just yet. In fact, studios have ended up pushing almost all of their content into 2021 in order to try and create enough of a gap where theaters can get themselves put together. This essentially means that they are waiting until people start going back to theaters in earnest before they waste time and effort to put movies out into the marketplace. With this fact now established for pretty much every major studio out there, we now have many movies being delayed for upwards of a year. This isn’t something that there is really any control of though and we just have to wait and see how things turn out.
Not every movie is taking this as the worst possible news ever though, as the most recent trailer for the movie ‘Free Guy‘ has shown. The movie follows Ryan Reynolds as he plays a non-player character, or NPC, in a video game who discovers the truth about his own reality. The movie was initially on the Summer line-up, but like every other film on that list, it was pushed back. It ended up being pushed to December, but like other delayed films, it may be pushed back even further than that. This was acknowledged in the newest piece of media for the film and they essentially said that it will be out whenever they feel it is comfortable for the film to release. It could be out in December, or it could be a lot longer before we see it. We don’t know, but at least that fact has been acknowledged by the filmmakers.