‘Fall Guy’ flop leaves Ryan Gosling’s sequel dreams in doubt

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A sequel to The Fall Guy has already been written, but it’s unlikely that it will ever get made after the film flopped at the box office this past weekend, opening below expectations with $28.5 million.

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In an interview with Fast Company, star Ryan Gosling said he hopes to keep telling the story of his character Colt Seavers, a stuntman who is hired to track down the missing actor who is the star of his ex-girlfriend’s (Emily Blunt) directorial debut.

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“The sequel sort of wrote itself,” Gosling told the outlet. “We already know (the story) intimately. We’re just hoping that people like this movie enough that we get to keep telling the story of these characters. We love them so much, and we love this world, and I feel confident that we can do it.”

He added, “These days everyone always hopes their movie can become a franchise.”

But Gosling’s ode to stunt performers underperformed at the box office opening with a paltry $28.5 million at North American theatres, effectively dashing his hopes for a sequel.

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The Universal Pictures film kicked off summer moviegoing on the May weekend that Marvel has dominated with $100 million-plus launches for over a decade. (On the same weekend in 2023, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 debuted with $118 million.) But last year’s strikes delayed Deadpool & Wolverine, which was originally slated to open on the first Friday in May.

Going into the weekend, early forecasts had The Fall Guy opening in the $30 million to $40 million range.

The action-comedy now faces a steep uphill battle to recoup its $130-million production budget.

“We love these characters so much that we wanted to know, just for ourselves, what happens to Colt and (Blunt’s character) Jody after the movie ends?” Gosling said hopefully in his interview with Fast Company. “What’s the next phase for them? And we know exactly what it is. So hopefully the audience wants to know, too.”

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Still, Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal, remains bullish on the film despite its lackluster first weekend results.

“We had a very solid opening,” Orr told the Associated Press, trying to put a positive spin on the muted results. “We’re looking forward to a very long, very robust, very successful run throughout the domestic box office for literally weeks if not months to come.”

But despite featuring two of the stars of last summer’s “Barbenheimer” phenomenon (Gosling starred in Barbie and Blunt appeared in Oppenheimer), The Fall Guy’s faceplant likely means the film will be one-and-done. Next weekend, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will open in theatres and a new Mad Max movie, Furiosa, is waiting in the wings later this month.

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“Universal spent money with The Fall Guy like they were delivering ‘Barbenheimer 2.0.’ But in reality what they got was a sequel to (the Sandra Bullock-Channing Tatum adventure comedy) The Lost City,” Jeff Bock, a senior box office analyst with Exhibitor Relations, tells Postmedia. “It’s a tall task to open the summer season in Hollywood and The Fall Guy fell noticeably short. Unfortunately, in real life, there is no second take. You get one shot at an opening weekend. Now Universal will have to pray (the film has) legs.”

“Given the high profile cast and its position as the kickoff film of the summer season, high expectations were placed on The Fall Guy, so its debut has been seen as a disappointment,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. But he thinks there’s still a chance the film can build some momentum over time.

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“For most audiences this was seen as an original film and not based on massively known IP, particularly amongst younger moviegoers. So it will take some time for word of mouth and buzz to kick in,” Dergarabedian says.

Ironically, during the press cycle for The Fall Guy, Gosling was asked why his 2016 action-comedy The Nice Guys also fell short of expectations and didn’t land a follow-up.

“So much of a sequel, I think, is decided by the opening weekend of a movie, and we opened up against Angry Birds,” Gosling explained in an interview with ComicBook.com. “So Angry Birds just, just destroyed us. Angry Birds got a sequel.”

The Nice Guys also faced competition on its opening weekend from Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and Captain America: Civil War.

At the end of its box office run, The Nice Guys, which co-starred Russell Crowe, managed to gross an estimated $62 million on a $50-million budget.

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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