The internet has been chewing over the full list of Oscar nominations upon their Tuesday morning release. While a lot of the Academy’s choices are pretty much what we expected, there are a few surprises in the mix as well. In particular, a few commercial, crowd-pleasing movies that you wouldn’t think would get a look-in at the awards show came away with some recognition. Like the Ryan Reynolds sci-fi comedy Free Guy, for example.
Yup, Free Guy can now officially be called an Oscar-nominated film, as it has been listed among the nominees for the Best Visual Effects category. Reynolds celebrated the news on Twitter today by giving a shout-out to the movie’s VFX team, which consists of Swen Gillberg, Bryan Grill, Nikos Kalaitzidis, and Dan Sudick. See his reaction below:
Free Guy has some tough competition its category, as its fellow nominees are Bond movie No Time To Die, sci-fi epic Dune and two Marvel flicks, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Spider-Man: No Way Home. Seeing as it’s nominated for nine other awards, including Best Picture, Dune is probably the favorite to take the gong home out of these, although Marvel also stands a decent chance thanks to the enormously successful No Way Home. But, you never know, maybe Free Guy has a shot too.
Free Guy stars Reynolds as Guy, a good-natured bank teller who discovers he’s really an NPC living in an open-world online video game. Together with hacker Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer), Guy must fight to save his home from greedy CEO Antwan (Taika Waititi), who plans to delete the game. Joe Keery, Lil Rey Howery, and Channing Tatum also feature. Reynolds is teaming up with director Shawn Levy again for Netflix’s upcoming time travel film The Adam Project.
Fresh off its Oscar nom, Free Guy is due to start streaming on Disney Plus from Feb. 23.