Ryan Reynolds’ next role: An NPC saving a game from shutdown

Deadpool’s Ryan Reynolds is working on a new film with a concept that’s a twist on the living-in-a-video-game premise: In this case, he plays a character trying to stop the game’s makers from shutting down his world.

Free Guy sounds like the untold, tragic story of what happens to the NPCs when the plug is pulled on an MMO. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 20th Century Fox is the studio, Reynolds the star and Shawn Levy (executive producer, Stranger Things) the director. Reynolds and Levy are also producers.

THR says Reynolds will play a background character who becomes aware he’s living in a game, and “with the help of an avatar” (I guess a human player character?) he tries to stop the shutdown. Matt Lieberman is Free Guy’s writer.

Sounds great. No due date has been set yet, but I hope the sequel is about a group of NPCs who fight to keep their world from changing and ultimately escape to a vanilla server.