Despite declining box-office attendance numbers amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and concerns over the new Delta variant, Ryan Reynolds' Free Guy has proved its staying power by having the best second weekend of the entire summer. Free Guy follows Reynolds' Guy, a non-player character (NPC) in a hugely multiplayer online game called Free City. After deviating from his programming and becoming aware that he exists in a video-game, he becomes in embroiled in a plot to expose the game's developer for stealing the code from another game.
Originally developed at 20th Century Fox prior to its acquisition by Disney, Free Guy was one of the first projects to continue development under the studio's new name of 20th Century Productions. Set to release in 2020, Free Guy was delayed as a result of the pandemic and finally opened exclusively in theaters on August 13th, where it topped the box office by taking over $28 million dollars. The film is the first of Disney's current spate of films to have a solely theatrical release, playing in theaters for a shortened 45-days before making its way to Disney+, something which will continue when Marvel Studios' Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings premieres on September 3rd.
In what has been heralded as a slow weekend for the box-office, Deadline is reporting that Free Guy has held onto the top box office spot despite entering into its second week. The film took $18.8 million over the latest three-day period, marking only on a 34% drop between weekends, the best of the entire summer period (any weekend after Memorial Day/May 31st). By contrast, Peter Rabbit 2, which had opened on June 11th, saw a drop of 40%, while James Gunn's hotly anticipated The Suicide Squad saw a drop of 71.5% after its lackluster opening weekend.
However, Deadline accurately point out that the holding power of Free Guy comes more as a result of its competition than anything else. It's a big-budget Disney/20th Century release entering its second week against the opening weekends for the likes of Searchlight's horror film The Night House, which took $2.8 million, and the Susie Q/Michael Keaton action film The Protégé, which took $2.93 million. The closest competition came from children's film PAW Patrol: The Movie, which beat expectations to earn $13 million.
Overall ticket sales ed for an estimated $64.1 million, constituting an approximate 41% decline from this time in 2019. With the box-office still struggling to reach its pre-pandemic levels, it's understandable why some studios have begun to take further precautions ahead of the release of their films. Earlier this month Sony, one of the few studios still committed to exclusively theatrical releases, announced that they were delaying Venom: Let There Be Carnage by three weeks. Likewise, they have also just signed a $100 million deal with Amazon for Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania to skip cinemas entirely and instead land on the streaming platform. Considering the under-12 target audience, which cannot be vaccinated, it's understandable why Sony would choose to shift their focus to VOD, especially if they can only expect numbers similar to PAW Patrol.
While the continued success of Free Guy does undoubtedly come from a lack of significant competition, there is perhaps something to be said for theatrically-exclusive releases in of ensuring attendance. That said, the option to stream films directly at home is certainly safer at the moment, and studios with their own platforms, like Disney+ and HBO Max, have the added bonus of keeping all profits, making the option far more appealing. With Shang-Chi set for an exclusively theatrical release in September, it will be interesting to see if Disney will repeat their success from Free Guy, or whether it will further push the studio towards hybrid-releases.
Source: Deadline
