Despite being well-received by critics and fans alike, Ryan Gosling doubts his and Russell Crowe’s The Nice Guys will get a sequel – and we can at least partly blame Angry Birds for that.
While on the press tour for his upcoming film The Fall Guy, Gosling spoke about the situation with Comicbook.com, throwing some cold water on hopes for The Nice Guys 2.
“So much of a sequel, I think, is decided by the opening weekend of a movie, and we opened up against Angry Birds,” Gosling said. “So Angry Birds just, just destroyed us.”
“Just pecked the shit out of you,” his Fall Guy co-star Emily Blunt added.
Looking back at the U.S. box office charts (per Box Office Mojo) for May 2016, The Nice Guys did indeed open well behind The Angry Birds Movie, taking in $11.2 million domestically compared to Angry Birds’ $38.1 million. We should note, however, that Angry Birds probably isn’t all to blame. The Nice Guys also opened against Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which beat the Gosling/Crowe action-comedy with $21.7 million. In fact, Forbes argued at the time that it was the wrong move for both of those movies to open on the same date, as they targeted similar demographics.
Not insignificantly, The Nice Guys was also contending with the continuing run of Captain America: Civil War, which came in at #2 that weekend with $32.9 million. Still, Angry Birds was the dominant force that weekend, and as Gosling poined out in the Comicbook.com interview, that game adaptation did end up getting a sequel.
It’s too bad The Nice Guys did face so much competition, as it was clearly meant to set up follow-ups. Director Shane Black commented on sequel possibilities in the past, although even he expressed doubt due to The Nice Guys’ struggle at the box office. It was reported that a female-led TV series based on The Nice Guys was in the works back in 2017, but we haven’t heard anything about that since.
IGN was among the critical raves that The Nice Guys got at the time, as we handed it a 9/10, writing, “Featuring a great pairing in Crowe & Gosling, The Nice Guys is a fun spin on the action-comedy and buddy flick genres.”
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
