Director Shawn Levy has created two new worlds in Free Guy, which arrives in theaters on August 13. When Millie (Jodie Comer) enters the Free City game as Molotov Girl on an important mission, she meets a cheerful NPC named Guy (Ryan Reynolds) who quickly levels up to player after their encounter.
Levy spoke to Screen Rant about collaborating with star Ryan Reynolds to shape what was already a brilliant idea, admiring the individual energies that the cast brought to the project, and getting to use some of Disney’s favorite IP.
Screen Rant: I think you have the film of the summer here in Free Guy. What was it about the script that spoke to you, and how did it evolve from when you first read it to getting it to the screen?
Shawn Levy: The script had a big, juicy premise and idea. But it also had themes that were really interesting to me and Ryan. Literally, from day one, Ryan and I met and we had this script about a video game character coming to the awareness that he exists in a game of the world.
But we wanted to really bring out the themes and the feelings of: don't we all kind of feel like we live in the background? Haven't we all felt a little bit powerless in the midst of a world that is not of our making? What if we started thinking about the notion that we can be empowered to have an impact, and that's the arc of the character.
Again, using this video game premise for a movie that is not about video games. It's about the way we all navigate the world and aspire to live.
Ryan's been on this project from day one, and he's been through it from the beginning to the end. Can you talk about the collaboration process with him throughout the whole experience of the film?
Shawn Levy: This was a script that existed at 20th Century Fox, and I had read it - I'm not even sure Ryan knew this at the time - three years earlier. I was like, "You know what? This should probably be made by a hardcore gamer." And I let it go.
Ryan calls me up in the summer of 2018. He's like, "I read this thing. I'm not really a big video gamer, but I think this could be like a new Truman Show." And so we met, and we said yes on the same day. So, every day that I've been on this movie, Ryan's been in lockstep with me. We were actor-director, we were producer-producer. He was literally with me in the rewrite, on the set, in the edit room, at the sound mix, and in the marketing.
We really forged a brotherhood on this movie. It was all about getting the gaming stuff right, but also making a movie that doesn't require fluency in the gaming world. Whether you're a gamer or not you're gonna walk into Free Guy, and it's gonna be fun, it's going to be warm, and it's going to be funny as hell.
Was it made during the merger, or was anything added after the merger specifically?
Shawn Levy: Oh, yeah. And I'm going to dance around this answer because who knows when this will be shared. But the movie got greenlit when 20 Century Fox was a standalone studio. While we were in pre-production, Disney basically swallowed Fox.
As Ryan and I started making the movie, it occurred to us, "Well, wait a second. Now that we're owned by that big behemoth conglomerate, they've got all these other cool things in their vault. Maybe they'll let us play with some of those toys." We didn't know whether we get a yes or no, but we knew we would regret not asking. So, we made certain special requests of the powers that be at Disney to play with some of those tools, some of those toys.
And to our astonishment, they said yes to every request. So, the movie is filled with some pretty great surprises.
I also love the relationship between Buddy and Guy, because that is a true friendship. What did Lil Rel Howery bring to the role of Buddy that wasn't necessarily on the page?
Shawn Levy: I'll tell you what Rel brought to the movie. We hired Rel, knowing he would be funny. But what I didn't know about Rel is his actual secret superpower is humanity.
The Buddy performance and the Buddy-Guy relationship is so filled with sweetness and humanity and warmth. And you root for that guy. You know they're fake people, you know they're in a video game, and yet you still root for them and champion them the way you do any character. For me, that was the real special sauce: the warmth and the humanism that Rel brings to the movie screen.
You also get to work with Taika Waititi, who's playing Antoine in this, and he kills it. Can you talk to me about working with him and collaborating with him? Because he's a great director in his own right. Does him being a director change the way that you direct him in a scene?
Shawn Levy: I'm sure there [are] many examples where a director has hired a fellow director to do an acting role and it's made the dynamic different or wonky or somehow different than actor-director.
With Taika, I love his movies. But from the minute we spoke, and the minute he stepped foot on set, he was like, "What do you want?" It was an actor-director relationship. Frankly, what I wanted was what he gave me. You get that kind of thoroughbred, you let that guy run. You let him run, and you see where it leads you.
Taika did the script. But every day, Taika did - I'm not exaggerating - 25 alternate jokes for every joke. I have hours of Taika Waititi outtakes that are brilliant, and it was just a matter of choosing which brilliant joke idea I put in the movie. He's really a uniquely inspired talent.
You said you weren't a really big gamer coming into this, but now I'm sure that you've played Grand Theft Auto or something along the lines that this game would be based on. Do you view NPCs in those games differently now after making this film?
Shawn Levy: Without question. I played video games growing [up], then as a younger adult - and I played a lot of video games when I was working on the screenplay and when I was prepping the movie.
Coming at it from this vantage point, suddenly I'm not looking at my avatar. I'm looking at everything that's going on in the background, and I'm looking for ways to fill our movie with jokes and easter eggs behind the thing you're looking at. Because that's, of course, where NPCs live, right? They live in the background, and the whole movie is about taking the people in the background and bringing them foreground.
We've got to talk about Jodie in this too because she is brilliant. She gets to play in a rom-com and as an action star. Can you talk to me about working with Jodie, and how she embraced all of that?
Shawn Levy: I'll just say that literally from four lines into Jodie's callback audition with Ryan - I was sitting in the room - I knew that we were watching someone who is going to be a major, important performer of her generation. She is incredibly talented. I haven't seen anything she can't do yet - including sing, by the way. She actually sings a cover of Mariah Carey's song. Come on, not that many talents!
But you're absolutely right. There was a piece of it that was just badass action heroine -Molotov Girl in the game. But really, the Millie character in the real world is a smart, willful, lonely, frustrated, relatable young woman. It becomes very much a rom-com storyline in many ways and the versatility and nimbleness with which Jodie can move from comedic to dramatic, from action to dialogue and drama? There's not that many performers who can do that, of any age and of any gender. The fact that she's 27 years old?
I just know someday I'm going to be an old man with a cane going, "I gave her her first movie. I gave that five-time Oscar winner her first movie," and I'll be proud of it.
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Reviewed by Riyad
on
August 13, 2021
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