‘Free Guy’s Ending Was Changed By the Disney/Fox Merger
The following post contains SPOILERS for the end of Free Guy.
One of the more enjoyable and surprising aspects of the Free Guy finale is the bevy of cameos in the big climactic battle between Guy (Ryan Reynolds) and his evil double Dude for the fate of their video game world. Guy calls in “reinforcements,” as it were, and uses a lightsaber, Hulk hands, and even Captain America’s shield in the fight. (Chris Evans even shows up to make a joke about it.) These cameos are even more surprising because Free Guy is a 20th Century Studios (formerly Fox) film while all of those famous properties are from the world of Disney.
Of course, 20th Century is now a subsidiary of Disney just like Lucasfilm and Fox, which is what made those Free Guy cameos possible. But Free Guy was in the works at Fox since back in 2016, which means the Marvel and Star Wars were relatively late additions to the movie. The original plan for that fight looked quite different.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, director Shawn Levy explained what that fight was going to look like if Disney hadn’t bought Fox:
We always wanted this idea that, at that point, Guy had mastery of the game world in which he lives and can therefore access all the various devices and weaponry that advanced players can utilize in Free City [After the merger we realized] if the whole idea of this movie is wish fulfillment, wouldn't the ultimate wish fulfillment for Guy to be to use the most iconic weaponry, essentially, in cultural history? And now we're owned by the same studio that conveniently owns Lucas[film] and Marvel.
Before that, Guy was going to beat Dude with “a more generic portal gun and gravity gun.” Later, Levy was able to get the rights to change that to the rainbow unicorn mace from Fortnite and Cable’s enormous rifle from Deadpool 2. They even shot a version with Cable’s gun despite the fact that by that point the Disney merger was a done deal. But, Levy says, “once you got a lightsaber and a Captain America shield, it's really, really hard for anything to compete on this scale.” So that’s what wound up in the final film.
Free Guy is now playing in theaters (and just theaters for the moment).