Disney was among the last studios to fully give up on theatrical releases for 2020, first by pushing Black Widow and Eternals to 2021; and shortly after completely removing any potential release dates for Free Guy and Death on the Nile, the company's last two films that were scheduled for release in 2020.

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Those changes will see Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy movie pushed from this month all the way to May 21, 2021. Free Guy is a sci-fi action comedy focused on the character Guy, an average person who happens to find out he’s an NPC character within a video game world. Up to this point Reynolds had heavily promoted the movie using his best marketing abilities and making fun of the uncertainty surrounding its release.

Free Guy Poirot

Rounding off the list of highly anticipated movies from Disney with new release dates for 2021 are: The Raya and the Last Dragon premiering on March 5; The King’s Man on March 12; Death on the Nile on September 17, 2021; while Searchlight Pictures’ horror film Antlers (produced by the award-winning Guillermo del Toro) now sits unscheduled.

Free Guy, directed by Shawn Levy, was pinpointed by the studio as a mid-sized bet certainly not near the same league as a Marvel film, but still reportedly filmed on a rather large budget nearing $150 million. Though movies based on video games generally have a bad reputation, Disney might be looking to repeat the recent success Sonic the Hedgehog and Ryan Reynolds’ own Detective Pikachu movie, which now stand as the highest-grossing films based entirely on games.

The video game world depicted in Free Guy had generated a fair amount of hype, so adding that up with the film’s budget it’s clear why Disney would opt to keep it off streaming on Disney+ where it would almost impossible to recoup the investment made on it. Disney's recouping its investment in Free Guy is still hardly a guarantee until studios get a better clue of what the box office will look like for Wonder Woman 1984 and the rest of the early 2021 theatrical releases.

Free Guy is scheduled for release on May 21, 2021.

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Source: IGN