Thor: Ragnarok helmer Taika Waititi is becoming one of the busiest men around. Not only is his directing career going rather smashingly, he’s now an actor in demand, too.
News broke this week via Deadline that Waititi is joining the cast of Free Guy, a Ryan Reynolds comedy vehicle from Night At The Museum director Shawn Levy about a humble bank teller who realises he’s just one player inside a massive, violent, open world video game. You may remember Reynolds flirted with this genre a little previously in 2007’s little-seen The Nines opposite Melissa McCarthy. Time for a do-over!
Free Guy has been written by by Zak Penn (Ready Player One) and Matt Liberman (The Christmas Chronicles), and Waititi is signing up to an already-burgeoning cast here that includes Jodie Comer, Joe Kerry, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Lil Rel.
Waititi has agreed to add his performance in Free Guy to a whirlwind year of work which has so far seen him direct an episode of Disney+’s forthcoming Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, finish post-production on his next feature film, Jojo Rabbit, help usher in a TV spin-off of his cult mockumentary film, What We Do In The Shadows, and also agree to co-write and direct a Time Bandits series for Apple’s new streaming service.
It’s still only March.
Oh, and if that lot’s not enough, he’s also in talks with Marvel about directing another MCU instalment for the studio.
We don’t know where he gets the energy…
