Non-player characters (NPCs) are a staple of video games: the anonymous members of a crowd that make up the background of the story you’re playing. At São Paulo’s Comic Con Experience (CCXP) today, 20th Century Fox unveiled a first look at Free Guy, about such a character who realizes that the world he inhabits isn’t what it seems.
Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) plays Guy, an NPC bank teller that is tired of the same, every-day bank robberies, hostage situations, and gun battles that make up life in his city. When he kills a player and takes his glasses, he learns that his world is really an open-world video game, and takes it upon himself to try and save the world from the gamers.
That’s a fun premise for a film: life for any NPC would be a hellish, repetitive cycle of violence and mayhem from which they could never escape. The film looks as though it has some of the irreverence that Reynolds brought to Deadpool, with a dash of The Lego Movie thrown in for good measure.
The film also stars Jodie Comer, Joe Keery, Lil Rel Howery, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Taika Waititi, and is set to open on July 3rd, 2020.
