Disney Removes Ryan Reynold’s ‘Free Guy’ From Its Release Schedule

This week, it was announced that the Walt Disney Company would be removing the action comedy film Free Guy from their upcoming release schedule. Directed by Shawn Levy and written by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, Free Guy stars Ryan Reynolds as a non-playable video game character named Guy who somehow becomes aware that his life is inside a video game after a glitchy program is installed by the developers (Taika Waititi, Jodie Comer and Joe Keery) of the game. Now forcibly taking the role of the video game’s main hero, Guy must find a way to stop his developers from shutting down the game in order to prevent the destruction of his virtual friends along with his entire world.

Free Guy was originally supposed to be released on July 23. However, because of  the COVID-19 pandemic the date was pushed back to December 11. Due to reasons still relating to the pandemic Disney has removed Free Guy from its release schedule entirely. The new date for the film’s release has not been revealed yet. Disney has not yet given an indication if the movie will even be released in theaters and instead premiere on the Disney+ streaming service. It is odd that Disney would remove Free Guy from its release schedule and not give an update on when it would be pushed back to, as most of the other upcoming films in their library have been either pushed back to an official date in 2021 like Marvel’s Black Widow or sent to be released on the Disney+ streaming service like Pixar’s Soul.

It is possible that Free Guy will eventually premiere on the Disney+ streaming service in a similar fashion to how movies like Mulan and Artemis Fowl skipped theaters and premiered on Disney+ instead.