Shane Black has introduced pop culture to many brilliant, dynamic duos over the course of his career, including Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans Sr. in The Last Boy Scout, and Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. In the writer/director’s most recent film, he introduces us to yet another amazing pair – played by Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe – but could we ever see them come back to the big screen for a sequel? At this point, that really all depends on you, the audience.
I had the pleasure of talking with Shane Black on the phone earlier this month, prior to The Nice Guys’ theatrical release, and one subject that I brought up was the idea of reuniting Ryan Gosling’s Holland March and Russell Crowe’s Jackson Healy again somewhere down the line for a Nice Guys 2. While the filmmaker’s attitude suggested that he would certainly be game for a follow-up, it’s a situation that really isn’t in his hands, and all depends on audiences going out to buy tickets. Said Black,
I think it’s a little premature to consider a sequel. I don’t believe in jinxes necessarily, but we really need people to see this one before we can even talk about that. We’re up against some stiff superhero competition and we just need people to, you know, maybe see Captain America six times, but not the seventh and see us instead.
After the performance of The Nice Guys during its opening weekend the past three days, things don’t necessarily look good. While critics absolutely loved the 1977-set detective story, and Warner Bros. advertised the hell out of the thing, the movie still only managed to pick up $11.2 million – good enough for fourth place behind The Angry Birds Movie, Captain America: Civil War and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. It’s indicative of a problem with audiences than with the film – given that movie-goers regularly complain about the lack of originality and then didn’t show up – but that’s an issue I get more deeply into HERE.
If you saw The Nice Guys this weekend and desperately want to see a Nice Guys 2, there is something that you can do: talk about it. It’s true that there are still many, many big movies set to come out this summer, but enough positive word of mouth can help the detective film gain some legs and prove that the $50 million budget was wholly worth it. We don’t get a lot of features like The Nice Guys anymore, and we’d really like to see more.
