Actor Ryan Gosling has an eclectic set of movies in his filmography, which has made him a versatile actor. Though the actor had his breakthrough with the romance flick The Notebook, he has branched out to action, comedy, sci-fi, and drama. Gosling was recently nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Ken in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
One of Gosling’s most underrated performances is the Shane Black-directed black comedy The Nice Guys. The neo-noir comedy sees him play a detective in the ‘70s along with Russell Crowe. Though the film is a cult classic now, it was a commercial failure. Gosling mentioned that the success of the animated movie The Angry Birds Movie ruined The Nice Guys’ chance for a sequel.
Ryan Gosling’s The Nice Guys 2 Was Affected By The Angry Birds Movie
Ryan Gosling’s underrated 2016 black comedy had everything going against it. The film received a May release and was out in cinemas along with established IPs such as The Angry Birds Movie and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. It was also released two weeks after the release of the MCU film Captain America: Civil War.
This resulted in the film receiving a low opening at the box office. According to ComicBook, the film opened with only $11.3 million, despite the presence of stalwarts such as Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, Matt Bomer, and Keith David present. While Black had to compete with his Kiss Kiss Bang Bang actor Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War, the animated movie The Angry Birds Movie surprisingly turned out to be their biggest bane.
The Angry Birds Movie reportedly opened with $39 million at the box office, taking the top spot that weekend. The film ended up earning $352 million at the global box office and even received a sequel in 2019. The commercial success of the animated film was reportedly the reason why The Nice Guys 2 never happened. Gosling said to ComicBook,
“So much of a sequel, I think, is decided by the opening weekend of a movie, and we opened up against Angry Birds. So Angry Birds just, just destroyed us. Angry Birds got a sequel.”
While The Angry Birds Movie was a commercial success, it received terrible reviews from both audiences and critics. It had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 43%, with an audience score of 47%. The Angry Birds Movie 2 seemed to have done a bit better, however.
The Nice Guys Almost Got A Sequel In The Form Of A TV Show
While The Angry Birds Movie foiled most plans for The Nice Guys 2, the Ryan Gosling-starring black comedy almost received a follow-up in the form of a TV show. Deadline reported back in 2017 that Fox Studios had given a development order for The Nice Girls, a gender-swapped reboot series of the film. The show was set to be produced by Joel Silver’s Silver Pictures Television along with Lionsgate TV.
While no new developments have been made on that show, Shane Black had previously mentioned that the film was first conceived as a TV show back in 2001. He said in an interview with Slash Film,
“We tried it as a TV show. We caught the characters, but the plot was totally different. It was set in the present day, and no one wanted to buy it. We had to look elsewhere.”
After being afraid that a studio would remove many elements to ‘homogenize’ the TV show, Shane Black reportedly went ahead and turned the idea into a movie. The film is Black’s highest-rated film in his filmography and he has expressed that he was ready to go for a sequel. He said to Fandango,
“In a heartbeat, if someone would pay for it. We had all kinds of ideas. The problem is it didn’t do that well at the box office. I imagine it will break even, which is not a formula for reacquiring two very expensive movie stars and proceeding with a sequel.”
Black mentioned that if a cult hit was enough for a studio to commission The Nice Guys 2, then he would immediately start work on the film.
The Nice Guys is streaming on Apple TV+. The Angry Birds Movie is streaming on Netflix.
