The second free Free Guy trailer (starring Ryan Reynolds as an video-game NPC character who gains awareness) debuted two days ago, and that’s notable for a few reasons: (1) The first trailer surfaced in November 2019, but you-know-what-happened to the original June 2020 release date; (2) People are truly craving new movies, and that’s reflected in the trailer’s almost absurdly huge view count. According to Hollywood Reporter, all of the platforms that are airing the trailer have gathered up a total of 55 million views so far.
Yes, people always want to see Ryan Reynolds, and this looks like a fun movie (also starring Jodie Comer as Molotov Girl, along with Taika Waititi and Alex Trebek in a cameo), but people could use a Good Guy now. And as Hollywood Reporter points out, last year’s trailer scored around 40 million views, so that’s a sizeable bump. (People are missing movie theaters, and that can’t be denied.) For comparison’s sake, the Shawn Levy-directed movie is outdoing his last wildly popular movie, and an MCU entry:
In terms of comps, this week’s Free Guy trailer surpassed Levy’s Ready Player One (44.5 million) and Marvel’s family-friendly Ant-Man and the Wasp (50 million), according to those with access to the stats.
The trailer is spread out all over the place, from Twitter and Instagram accounts to YouTube, where Reynolds’ page has scored about ten times the amount of 20th Century Fox’s page, so they definitely cast the right guy in this movie. Of course, there’s virtually no way that the film’s current release date (December 11) will actually happen in theaters, given that almost all the tentpoles have pushed into 2021. Soooo… will we see Free Guy hot-drop on VOD anytime soon? After the very welcome reception to the trailer this week, surely people would open their wallets to watch this at home (and soon).
(Via Hollywood Reporter)
