Ryan Gosling gave one the best comedic performances of his career in the Shane Black-directed neo-noir comedy The Nice Guys, and now he's jokingly shared why there's no hope of a sequel getting made.
In an interview with comicbook.com, Gosling shot down the possibility of a follow-up to the burgeoning cult classic, in which he starred opposite Russell Crowe. "So much of a sequel, I think, is decided by the opening weekend of a movie, and we opened up against Angry Birds," he shared. "So Angry Birds just, just destroyed us. Angry Birds got a sequel."
The Nice Guys opened nationwide on May 20, 2016, the same day The Angry Birds Movie opened. The black comedy grossed over $62 million on a $50 million budget, while Angry Birds grossed $352 million on a $73 million budget. To make matters worse, Captain America: Civil War hit theaters just two weeks earlier and was still pulling in impressive figures. Coincidentally, Marvel superstar Robert Downey Jr. made an uncredited cameo appearance in The Nice Guys as a corpse.
Gosling's unfortunate news comes ahead of the release of the David Leitch-directed action-comedy The Fall Guy, in which the actor portrays an aging stuntman who gets roped into finding a missing actor. After Barbie served as a reminder of Gosling's comedic chops, many are revisiting the underrated The Nice Guys. It's not the first time the possibility of a sequel has come up, though.
In 2018, Black made it clear he would make a sequel in a heartbeat but the box office performance of the original would prove that to be difficult. "We had all kinds of ideas," Black told Fandango. "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."
