Ryan Reynolds reveals new Free Guy release date…and eats some cereal

Free Guy has found its new release date...fingers crossed. Sharing a funny clip from the upcoming sci-fi comedy about what life is like behind the scenes for his lowly non-playable video game character, Ryan Reynolds let fans in on the delayed film’s new appointment with theaters — and thankfully, it’s still on track to get here this year.

Delayed from its originally-planned July 3 release by the industry-wide studio shuffle over coronavirus concerns, Free Guy is now headed to theaters on Dec. 11, as Reynolds revealed at the end of a never-before-seen silly snippet from the film. Here he is in character, obediently enjoying a bowl of breakfast cereal while catching up on all the mayhem his game designer gods have cued up for the day:

In posting the clip, Reynolds added a “fingers crossed” emoji beside the new date — no doubt a nod to the ongoing uncertainty over how the pandemic will play out — and said that the footage is stamped with the “Property of Fox” watermark because it was made before the Disney-Fox merger. “We cut it a while ago (while there was still a Fox and before it was just 20th Century Pictures) and couldn’t finish it so ignore the watermarks,” Reynolds helpfully explained.

Directed by Shawn Levy and featuring Reynolds alongside Jodie Comer, Taika Waititi, Joe Keery and more, Free Guy’s meta-premise is loaded with silly potential: take a video game NPC, give him self-awareness of his situation, and then free him up to see how he can game the system. Think of it as a digitized version of Westworld mixed with the wake-up power of those magic glasses from John Carpenter's They Live — and add laughs. Or, as composer Vristophe Beck told SYFY WIRE last year, "It’s a cross between Grand Theft Auto and The Truman Show."

If there’s a virtue to being a non-playable character in a video game, it’s gotta be patience. After all, it takes a ton of the stuff to wait behind the scenes until your generic name is called (in the movie, Reynolds' character is simply called "Guy") — all so you can waltz onto the screen and play your pre-scripted part while all the important characters take center stage. If Reynolds can do it, hey — so can we. Look for Free Guy to finally cut loose in theaters (again, fingers crossed!) on Dec. 11.