Better standings for other films at the box office is one of the main reasons the 2016 film The Nice Guys didn’t get a sequel. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ryan Gosling, who played Detective Holland March, said that the box office during The Nice Guys run was the main reason for not getting picked up. 

Gosling noted that the main film that set the matter into motion was The Angry Birds Movie, which debuted the same weekend as The Good Guys. Gosling would explain that the CG animated film based on the mobile game would “destroy” his film financially at the box office.

The film focuses on Detective March (Gosling), who is hired to look into the death of a famous porn star. When trying to work on the case, another detective named Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is hired to lead March away from the case. But when the person who hired Healy also goes missing, both detectives put aside their differences and work together to uncover what is going on with the case.

While the film’s plot is original, its opening weekend domestically didn’t do as well as the famous mobile game adaptation. Gosling’s film grossed only $11.3 million while Angry Birds would earn triple these earnings at $39 million.

Looking at the total, Angry Birds made $352.3 million worldwide while The Good Guys only made $71 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. 

Audience ambitions possibly played a role in the lower grossing; according to THR, the Seth Rogan film Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War were playing in theaters. Captain America was especially a hot ticket item during that time, as fans were not only excited to see their favorite Marvel characters fight against one another, but it was also the introduction to Spider-Man in the MCU.

Despite smaller earnings, Gosling’s film was well-received by both audiences and reviewers. According to Rotten Tomatoes, The Good Guys received 91% from reviewers, making it a fresh hit, while it received 79% from audiences. But it appears Warner Brothers didn’t focus on this when deciding on sequels.

If the film was released at a different point in 2016, who knows how successful it would have become?