Ryan Reynolds isn't just a dude who can act. He's a dude who can market alongside Hollywood's best and brightest studio promoters.

During the past year and a half, multiple studios stared down a now-familiar scenario: delaying the release of a tentpole movie and pulling the plug on a marketing campaign, only to try to figure out how to reposition the title many months later. Marketing execs face an uphill climb — not to mention a budget crunch — when this happens, and many projects haven't quite achieved liftoff at the box office when they finally unspool.

Free Guy is about a bank teller who discovers he's a non-player character in a video game and becomes the hero when saving his friends from being deleted by the creator (Taika Waititi).

Jodie Comer, Joe Keery, Lil Rel Howery and Utkarsh Ambudkar also star.