It makes perfect sense that Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi would get together to promote their upcoming movie Free Guy, but no one was expecting the pair to show up as Deadpool and Korg in a brand new YouTube trailer reaction video.
This marks the first time that Deadpool has officially appeared in an MCU character crossover and signals that plans to include him in the Marvel blockbuster juggernaut are still very much afoot after some time passing with no update on Deadpool 3’s MCU status.
Waititi voices Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War’s super casual Kronan rock warrior Korg as he joins Reynolds in full Deadpool attire on the couch to check out the trailer for Free Guy in the new footage, and the pair trade comedic barbs before the Merc With a Mouth eventually signs off with “I preferred The Dark World.” Oof.
Free Guy has been delayed no less than three times, but was in development at 20th Century Fox before Disney swooped in to acquire the studio and so ended up being one of the first Fox films to fully progress under Disney ownership. Meanwhile, the R-rated Deadpool 3 was earmarked for MCU integration and has slowly moved forward at Marvel Studios along with star and producer Reynolds attached to reprise his role as Wade Wilson. Sisters Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Loeglin (Bob’s Burgers) were last heard to be handling the script.
You can see Deadpool and Korg reacting to the Free Guy trailer below…
Marvel maestro Kevin Feige confirmed back in January that the studio’s Deadpool threequel was eyeing a 2022 filming start date at the earliest due to the already-packed MCU production schedule and Reynolds’ availability.
“Ryan is a very busy, very successful actor,” he explained. “We’ve got a number of things we’ve already announced that we now have to make, but it’s exciting for it to have begun. Again, a very different type of character in the MCU, and Ryan is a force of nature, which is just awesome to see him bring that character to life.”
In Free Guy, Reynolds plays Guy, an NPC bank teller in an open world video game called Free City who becomes aware of his surroundings thanks to an intriguing program developed by Milly (Jodie Comer) and Keys (Joe Keery), which is inserted into the game by its publisher Antoine (Waititi). Guy is then in a race against time to save the game before the devs shut it down.
“I haven’t been this fully immersed and engaged in something since Deadpool,” Reynolds said of Free Guy at NYCC 2019. “I think we live in really weird times right now, you’re watching the news and the top story today is ‘it’s the end of the world.’ I felt a kinship to the character in that you can sometimes feel like a background character. The world is on loop and you have no control over what’s happening.”
Waititi is currently deep in post-production on his next MCU installment, Thor: Love and Thunder. The highly anticipated fourquel will see Chris Hemsworth once again star as the God of Thunder alongside Tessa Thompson, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Chris Pratt, Jaimie Alexander, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Sean Gunn, Jeff Goldblum, and Vin Diesel. It’s set to open on May 6, 2022 – probably without Deadpool, but we won’t count it out just yet. That movie looks to be utterly bonkers.
Free Guy will be released on August 13th.