Max and Annie Davis are avid gamers who met at bar trivia and became engaged during charades. The couple's plans for a baby are complicated by Max's feelings of inadequacy compared to his successful brother, Brooks.
They regularly host a game night with their friend Ryan and married couple Kevin and Michelle, while struggling to keep it secret from their socially awkward police officer neighbor Gary, especially after his painful divorce from their friend Debbie. Brooks arrives in Max's dream car, humiliates him with a childhood story, and offends Annie (who assumed Max was overthinking his issues with Brooks) by offering to host the next game night himself.
When the guests, including Ryan's new date Sarah, arrive at Brooks's rental house, Brooks reveals he has initiated an interactive role-playing mystery game. The winner is promised his Corvette. An actor enters to begin the game but is knocked unconscious by two masked men who kidnap Brooks.
Believing this is part of the game, the couples passively observe the fight and split up to solve the mystery. Ryan and Sarah visit the role-playing company’s office to offer a bribe for the final clue. When Kevin and Michelle talk to the actor, they realize Brooks's abduction was real.
Max and Annie track Brooks's phone to a bar and use a pistol Brooks dropped to hold his captors at gunpoint and free him. When Annie accidentally shoots Max in the arm, they realize they are in danger. They flee as Brooks confesses that he is a black marketeer: he procured a Fabergé egg for a criminal known as "the Bulgarian" but instead sold it to someone with the alias "Marlon Freeman". With his kidnappers in pursuit, Brooks jumps out of the car so Max and Annie can escape.
The couples regroup and, unable to go to the police, decide to recover the egg from Freeman to deliver to the Bulgarian. They show up at Gary's and distract him with the pretense of a game night while Max uses his police computer to discover Freeman's real name, Donald Anderton, and his address. After Max bleeds on Gary's dog and a shrine dedicated to Debbie, the group leaves and receives the kidnappers' call to meet them in one hour.
They sneak into Anderton's mansion, where he is hosting an underground fight club. Searching for the egg, Michelle admits to Kevin that she once slept with Denzel Washington while they were briefly separated, but Kevin determines him to be his doppelganger after seeing his photo. Separately, Max tells Annie he may not be ready to have a child. Ryan spots the egg in an open safe, leading to a game of keep away with Anderton's guards. The group escapes with the egg but accidentally breaks it, revealing a list inside.
The group meets with Brooks and his captors, only to be captured themselves. Brooks reveals that he has always been jealous of Max's life and intended for him to win the Corvette all along. Gary saves them but is shot in the chest. Max and Annie comfort him by promising to invite him to every future game night, and he reveals that he faked the entire abduction — including hiring the kidnappers — to trick them into letting him rejoin game night.
He is, however, unaware of the list, which he recognizes as a WITSEC list, and they are cornered by the real Bulgarian. Max offers the list in exchange for their lives, but Brooks, thinking they will all be killed anyway, swallows the list and is taken to the Bulgarian's plane. Max and Annie race to the airport in the Corvette, stop the plane, subdue the Bulgarian and his henchmen, and rescue Brooks; Max realizes he wants to be a father after all.
Three months later, Brooks is under house arrest for his crimes and has sold the list on the black market for $3 million (after tipping off the witnesses for $20,000 each). He hosts game night for the group, including Gary, and Annie reveals she is pregnant through a game of Pictionary as armed men arrive outside.
Additionally, the film's directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein cameo as Carter and Dan, respectively. Kenny (credited as "Not Denzel") is portrayed by Malcolm X. Hughes, a part-time Denzel Washington impersonator.[5]Jeffrey Wright makes an uncredited cameo as an actor playing Agent Ron Henderson, an FBI Agent.
Production
Development
Producer John Fox had the film's title, and asked screenwriter Mark Perez for story ideas. Perez took inspiration from films like Three Amigos and Tropic Thunder. He pitched the concept to 20th Century Fox, who liked it. The two pitched the project to Jason Bateman, who also liked it. They then sold the idea to New Line Cinema around 2013-2014.[6] Bateman was initially slated to direct, as well as produce and star in the film. When screenwriters Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley were hired to rewrite Perez's script, it became clear to Bateman that the two would also want to direct the film, so Bateman stepped down.[7]
Pre-production
On May 24, 2016, New Line Cinema hired Goldstein and Francis Daley to rewrite and direct the film Game Night, which Jason Bateman produced through Aggregate Films.[8] While Daley and Goldstein did not receive screenwriter credit, they later said they rewrote "almost all of the original script’s dialogue, totally overhauled the characters — most notably a creepy cop portrayed by Jesse Plemons — and comprehensively reworked the original script’s third act."[9]
Warner Bros. Pictures had originally scheduled Game Night for release on February 14, 2018.[20] The date was later pushed back to March 2, 2018, before being moved up to February 23, 2018.[21]
Reception
Box office
Game Night grossed $69.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $48.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $117.7 million, against a production budget of $37 million.[2]
In the United States and Canada, Game Night was released alongside Annihilation and Every Day, and was projected to gross $13–21 million from 3,488 theaters in its opening weekend.[22] The film made $5.6 million on its first day (including $1 million from Thursday night previews). It ended up grossing $17 million over the weekend, finishing second, behind holdover Black Panther.[23] The film dropped 38.8% (above average for a comedy) in its second weekend to $10.4 million, and finished fourth, behind Black Panther and newcomers Red Sparrow and Death Wish.[24] It made $7.9 million in its third weekend,[25] $5.6 million in its fourth[26] and $4.1 million in its fifth.[27]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 85% based on 257 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "With a talented cast turned loose on a loaded premise — and a sharp script loaded with dark comedy and unexpected twists — Game Night might be more fun than the real thing."[28] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[29] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported that 78% of filmgoers gave it a positive score.[23] Many critics noted the similarity of the plot to that of The Man Who Knew Too Little.[30]
Owen Gleiberman of Variety, gave the film a positive review, saying "Even at 100 minutes, Game Night pushes its premise to the wall of synthetic escapism. Yet the movie manipulates its audience in cunning and puckish ways. It's no big whoop, but you're happy to have been played."[31]
Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair gave the film a positive review, but wrote: "It's a good time, but it maybe could have been a great one. Which I suppose is true of so many nights meant to deliver us from the doldrums of settled life."[32] Jon Frosch of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "There are chuckles here and there, but a striking absence of belly laughs".[33]
During the film's opening weekend, screenwriter Mark Perez discussed the possibility of a sequel, saying "It would be great to have sequels. Super titles like Game Night or specific titles like that feel genetically built to have sequels... That would mean the movie did well, and that's all I really care about at this stage."[37]
In a 2023 interview with directors Daley and Goldstein, when asked about a Game Night sequel, they said "Our favorite thing is to leave the audience wanting more, as opposed to hitting them over the head. And that was a case where we ended the movie with a sort of fake setup for a sequel, but we feel like it might be hard to top what we did."[38]
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