This past weekend, there was no film that even touched the popularity of Shawn Levy's Free Guy. The movie was released alongside two other notable wide release titles – the horror sequel Don't Breathe 2 and the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect – but the video game-inspired movie took the lion's share of the movie-going audience. Based on its performance and all of the buzz that has been built, people are clearly loving it... but it's quite possible that nobody loves it more than five-time Grammy winner Mariah Carey, whose song "Fantasy" is prominently featured on the soundtrack.
Many social media users have been vocal about their Free Guy thoughts in the last few days, posting love for stars Ryan Reynolds, Lil Rel Howery, Jodie Comer, and Taika Waititi, but I'm not sure anybody is going to top the revelation from Mariah Carey on Twitter that she has already watched the blockbuster nine times:
Is it possible that this is hyperbole? Absolutely. Running end-to-end, Free Guy is nearly two hours long, and 18 hours of one's life is a lot to dedicate to one film. But as someone who personally loves seeing people be super excited about watching movies, there is definitely a significant part of me that wants it to be true.
In Free Guy, Mariah Carey’s music actually plays a somewhat significant part in the plot. At the start of the film, Ryan Reynolds’ Guy is an ordinary non-playable character (a.k.a. NPC) in an open world video game, but things start to evolve for him when he first sees Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer) and the song “Fantasy” starts playing in his head. It’s one of the first steps he takes towards becoming a sentient artificial intelligence, so that’s a pretty big deal.
It stretches the imagination to believe that Mariah Carey actually bought nine movie tickets this past weekend to watch the Free Guy several times, but given her audible presence in it, perhaps Shawn Levy let her get multiple sneak peeks at the thing over the last few months. Either way, hopefully this display of effusive positivity will ultimately land the singer at least a cameo in Free Guy 2 (which is now in development).
If you’re like Mariah Carey and want to see Free Guy multiple times, the option is now yours to take, as the film is now playing exclusively on the big screen nationwide (no Disney+ streaming option available for this one). And if you’ve already seen the Ryan Reynolds movie nine times personally and are curious about all of the other features else that is set to arrive between now and the end of December, be sure to check out our 2021 Movie Release Calendar.
