In the summer of 2016, Shane Black treated moviegoers to The Nice Guys, a slickly made, fiercely original ‘70s-set neo-noir with a pitch-black comic sensibility and two lead characters strong enough to sustain a franchise. In the lead up to the movie’s release, when Black was asked about the possibility of a sequel, he told CinemaBlend, “I think it’s a little premature to consider a sequel. […] We’re up against some stiff superhero competition and we just need people to, you know, maybe see Captain America six times, but not the seventh and see us instead.”
Unfortunately, audiences did go to see Cap a seventh time. While moviegoers were flocking to see Tony Stark and Steve Rogers face off over the Sokovia Accords, The Nice Guys came and went without making the box office splash it deserved. When Marvel went laughing to the bank with Captain America: Civil War’s $1.1 billion global haul, The Nice Guys placed fourth in its opening weekend (behind Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which targeted a similar demographic and demanded much less from the audience), scuppering any chance of blockbuster status. In the end, Black’s movie pulled in just $62.8 million against a $50 million budget, so a sequel was no longer in the cards.
It’s a crying shame, because The Nice Guys was primed to launch a buddy cop franchise about a pair of mismatched private investigators taking on raunchy, violent cases in the ‘70s. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe were both individually perfect for their roles and shared impeccable on-screen chemistry. The beauty of Black’s Nice Guys script is that it’s always focused on the characters and their yin-and-yang dynamic. Gosling’s Holland March is a bumbling, booze-addled P.I. whose teenage daughter takes care of him more than he takes care of her, while Crowe’s Jackson Healy is a hypercompetent brute who struggles to connect with other people.
The Nice Guys was one of the best comedies of the decade, in a decade that saw the genre become stale with lazy efforts like Dirty Grandpa and Holmes & Watson in the backslide of the Apatow company’s heyday. A sequel would’ve undoubtedly bested a lot of the comedy sequels we were treated to this past decade: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Little Fockers, A Bad Moms Christmas. The ending of the movie even explicitly sets up a sequel as March meets Healy in a bar on Christmas Eve – a nod to Black’s yuletide-centric filmmaking style – and shows him an ad for their new detective agency, “The Nice Guys.” This effectively made the movie a big, cinematic pilot episode (in fact, the project originated as a TV pilot before being retooled for the big screen).
Black previously created the Lethal Weapon franchise, arguably the most iconic buddy cop series of all time, but he had no input in the sequels beyond an early script for Lethal Weapon 2 with a much darker tone than the eventual final cut. The Nice Guys could’ve put his sharp character work at the forefront of a long-running franchise, guiding both the standalone adventures and ongoing story threads with a singular vision much like George Lucas’ Star Wars movies, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, or Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman movies.
Gosling and Crowe’s chemistry was fun enough to carry another five or six movies, especially if Black’s razor-sharp writing continued to balance the hilarious dichotomy of their seemingly incompatible characters as well as it did in the first one. Beyond their hysterical characterization, March and Healy also have a lot of humanity, from March’s shortcomings as a single father to Healy’s remorse over his past. The first movie introduced them as frenemies; it would’ve been interesting to see how a sequel developed their dynamic into a bona fide B.F.F.-ship.
There aren’t enough hard R-rated franchises out there. Outside of Deadpool, The Matrix, and John Wick, Hollywood doesn’t have much to offer in the way of franchises for grownups. David Fincher tried to launch an adult-oriented franchise with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but it underperformed at the box office and the studio ditched Fincher’s sequel in favor of a reboot (which ironically bombed even harder). In a landscape of sanitized teen-skewering actioners and family-friendly comedies, The Nice Guys was decidedly hard-R and adult-oriented. Granted, this may have contributed to its failure at the box office, but with better marketing, it could’ve been a huge hit with the 18-49 age range and audiences could have a new Nice Guys adventure to look forward to every couple of years.
In the years since The Nice Guys hit theaters, Black has reiterated his interest in making a sequel, saying he would make a follow-up “in a heartbeat,” but believes it’s dead in the water since the first movie didn’t make enough money: “We had all kinds of ideas [for sequels]. 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.” It doesn’t seem like a Nice Guys sequel will ever get a theatrical release, but with the way Netflix and Amazon can throw money away on direct-to-streaming content, it might be economically viable to revive The Nice Guys as a streaming franchise.
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