About

Free Guy is a 2021 film starring actor Ryan Reynolds about an NPC in an open-world video game who becomes self-aware and must become a hero to save the game from being shut down. The film gained significant attention leading up to its release, inspiring a number of memes based on its poster image of Ryan Reynolds walking through an exploding cityscape. Promotional posters for the film based on video game cover art also became the subject of discussion in the days leading up to its release. The film is set to release on August 13th, 2021.

History

Free Guy originally began production in May 2019.^[1] On December 7th, 2019, a trailer was released for the film to the 20th Century Studios YouTube^[3] page, gaining over 14 million views in roughly a year and a half (shown below). The film features a number of references to various video game series.

The official poster for the film was released alongside the trailer, depicting Reynolds walking happily through a cityscape as car crashes, explosions and general chaos erupts behind him (shown below).

On June 10th, 2021, a second trailer was released, gaining over 4.8 million views in a month (shown below).

Online Presence

Free Guy Ryan Reynolds Poster Meme

Following the release of the film's first poster showing Reynolds strolling through a chaotic cityscape, people began using it as an exploitable image-labeling format. For example, on December 10th, 2019, Redditor u/WrightyPegz posted a meme to /r/HistoryMemes^[5] using the image, gaining over 12,300 upvotes in a year and a half (shown below).

On June 15th, 2020, eBaum's World^[6] user MohAki1 added a meme using the image to a collection, gaining over 41,200 total views in a year (shown below).

Deadpool and Korg React Promotional Video

On July 13th, 2021, Ryan Reynolds posted a video to YouTube^[2] in character as Deadpool alongside Taika Waititi as Korg reaction to the Free Guy trailer, gaining over 12 million views in a month (shown below).

Free Guy Video Game Parody Posters

On August 9th, the Free Guy Twitter^[4] page posted a collection of eight posters for the film parodying video games, featuring Ryan Reynolds as a character on each, including Super Mario 64, Doom, Grand Theft Auto, Street Fighter, Minecraft, Among Us, Animal Crossing, and Mega Man (shown below). The tweet gained over 4,000 likes and 1,800 retweets in two days.

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Search Interest

External References