Free Guy features YouTube streamer LazarBeam in a cameo role as himself, and he’s joined by several other real-life gamers who also appear in the new sci-fi action-comedy film by director Shawn Levy. Lazarbeam, also known as Lannan Eacott, is an Australian streamer with over 19 million subscribers on YouTube. Apart from being a formidable gamer, LazarBeam’s comedic personality and clever video editing have made him a well-loved online video game streaming celebrity. Alongside his fellow streamers, LazarBeam’s cameo in Free Guy gives the multiplayer video game-driven plot considerably more weight and realism.
While it’s billed as an action-comedy – and those elements are definitely on-point in Free Guy – the film is a sci-fi gem that essentially depicts the birth and awakening of the first true AI in a fictional Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto-inspired MMO shooter called Free City. As LazarBeam said in an interview with Screen Rant, "I think this was such a unique meeting point between [the] new YouTube streaming culture and the traditional big-budget movie, but it's such a unique pairing because of the concept of this movie." Played by Ryan Reynolds, the main character in the cast of Free Guy is the titular Guy himself, an NPC (non-player character) that learns to level up by doing good deeds in-game. This quickly makes Guy popular among the characters of Free City players – who not only earn their keep through violence but are also completely unaware that Guy is an advanced AI-driven NPC.
LazarBeam’s cameo in Free Guy happens after Guy encounters Revenjamin Buttons (Channing Tatum), the Free City avatar of a popular 22-year-old streamer named Keith. The live-streamed encounter catapults Guy into mainstream fame, and his actions become hotly debated in the streaming world, eventually reaching bigger YouTube streamers like LazarBeam. "They say over a billion NPCs are killed every year. Now, I'm not gonna lie, that's at least 50% of my fault," explains LazarBeam over a montage of violent NPC deaths at the hands of Free Guy's vehicles and weapons in a YouTube stream. When all of the NPCs in Free City disappear from their usual stations, LazarBeam says that he’s “never seen anything like this” in his three years of playing Free City.
LazarBeam also contributes a brief but heartfelt “No!” when the overpowered Dude NPC gets a full mount on Guy and gives him a purple nurple. Apart from punctuating some of the best comic and dramatic moments in Free Guy, director Shawn Levy uses LazarBeam’s cameos to raise some of the film’s heavier moral dilemmas – in a voice that’s both familiar and relatable to the film’s primary audience of gamers. In fact, LazarBeam is not the only gamer with a cameo in the film. Free Guy also features cameos from streamers like Ninja, Jacksepticeye, DanTDM, and Pokimane, whose respective cameos help in grounding the film’s events in a familiar and popular reality. As brief as these cameos are, they all happen during crucial and pivotal plot events. Moreover, the inclusion of these user names in the movie's billing has no doubt contributed to its current box office success.
Beyond the novelty offered by typical niche celebrity cameos, LazarBeam and his fellow streamers’ scenes in Free Guy have allowed director Shawn Levy to bring his outrageous vision to life. Furthermore, these cameos are actually just a handful of the many video game and film Easter eggs and references in Free Guy, all of which have contributed to its box office popularity. In fact, in a report by Collider, Free Guy made $28.4 million during opening weekend, effectively taking the number one spot in the U.S. box office. As the film is likely to make much more than its production budget of around $100 million, it's no surprise that Disney is already considering making a sequel. And if that happens, LazarBeam might just get another cameo in yet another blockbuster film.