Free Guy: Taika Waititi Joins Ryan Reynolds In Shawn Levy's Video Game Movie
Free Guy needed a new guy, and this guy was free.
Thor: Ragnarok director and What We Do in the Shadows mastermind Taika Waititi has joined the cast of Free Guy, the forthcoming video game movie directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Reynolds in the lead role.
Deadline delivered the details on Waititi's casting in an exclusive report on Thursday, March 28, which also announced that The Mindy Project actor Utkarsh Ambudkar has boarded the project.
Details on the character Waititi will play, as well as the role Ambudkar is set for, are being kept under tight wraps at 20th Century Fox (now absorbed by the Walt Disney Company) and 21 Laps Entertainment. However, Collider notes that Waititi will portray "the owner of the software/tech company that created the game."
Written by Matt Lieberman (The Christmas Chronicles, The Addams Family) and Zak Penn (Ready Player One, The Avengers, X-Men: The Last Stand), Free Guy follows Reynolds' Guy, a bank teller who realizes he isn't an actual human but a player inside a video game. The film also stars Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer, Stranger Things darling Joe Keery, and comedian and Get Out star Lil Rel Howery.
Waititi broke into the mainstream with Thor: Ragnarok after gaining acclaim in his home country of New Zealand for writing and directing the coming-of-age drama Boy, the adventure comedy-drama Hunt for the Wilderpeople (which is, as of August 2018, the highest-grossing New Zealand film ever made), and the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows (which FX has turned into a television series). It will be amazing to see Waititi back in front of the camera — and watch as he reunites with Reynolds, his Green Lantern co-star. For those who may not remember, Reynolds top-lined the tragic 2011 superhero movie as Hal Jordan, while Waititi took on the role of Thomas Kalmaku, an engineer at Ferris Aircraft. Free Guy sounds like it will turn out a lot better than the much-maligned Green Lantern, bolstered by an all-star cast featuring Reynolds, Comer, Keery, Howery, and now Waititi and Ambudkar.
Before Waititi appears in Free Guy, fans of his work can catch his World War II-era satirical comedy-drama Jojo Rabbit, which he directs and stars in. He's also lined up to direct an episode of The Mandalorian, the live-action Star Wars series set to debut on Disney+ later this year, and is hard at work directing and executive-producing FX's What We Do in the Shadows series, which premiered on Wednesday, March 27.
Free Guy is scheduled for release on July 3, 2020.