By Witney Seibold

Shane Black’s 2016 cop comedy “The Nice Guys” was a winking, comedic riff on hard-boiled detective movies, meant to deconstruct the genre as much as pay homage to it. Set in Los Angeles in 1977, the plot revolves around the booming porn industry and the private investigators hired to look into a mysterious death. The central joke of “The Nice Guys” is that the main P.I.s, Holland March (Ryan Gosling) and Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) are kind of bumbling idiots. They know how to investigate mysteries, but their central talents seem to be good luck and mere tenacity. Because the film was written by Black, the dialogue crackles and the characters vibrate with energy and life; Black doesn’t write dialogue to be merely functional, preferring to give his characters wit and pathos.

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“The Nice Guys” cost $50 million to make, but only ultimately earned about $71 million worldwide, which, in Hollywood terms, a notable bomb. Black was wary at the time of his film’s release, feeling that a 1970s crime comedy wouldn’t necessarily stand up well against the big-budget, effects-dripping superhero flicks that were so in vogue at the time. “The Nice Guys” opened less than three weeks after “Captain America: Civil War,” and Black knew that even after 18 days, the superheroes might still drain money from his film’s box office potential.

If “The Nice Guys” could slip out from under the Captain’s shadow, it might provide a large opening weekend and set up a potential sequel.

It turns out that Captain America wasn’t the primary threat to “The Nice Guys.” In a new interview with Comicbook.com, Gosling revealed that the big that opened opposite “The Nice Guys” was an animated feature no one expected anything from. “The Nice Guys” was sunk by “The Angry Birds Movie.”

Clay Katis’ and Fergal Reilly’s “The Angry Birds Movie” was based, rather infamously, on a mobile phone game, first released by the Finnish company Rovio Entertainment in 2009. The premise of the game was simple: a player loaded a limbless bird into a massive slingshot and flung it at rickety stone castles populated by smug, green pigs. The more a player could knock over, the higher their score. It was an ideally mindless game, perfect for wasting time in airports. “Angry Birds” became unexpectedly huge, however, and it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came knocking. The resulting movie starred Jason Sudeikis as the angriest of the birds. It’s not a good film.

When Gosling was asked about making “The Nice Guys 2,” he placed its struggle to get made directly on the shoulders of “The Angry Birds Movie,” saying:

"So much of a sequel, I think, is decided by the opening weekend of a movie, and we opened up against 'Angry Birds.' So 'Angry Birds' just, just destroyed us. 'Angry Birds' got a sequel."

Both films opened on March 20, 2016. “The Nice Guys” opened to $11 million. “The Angry Birds Movie” opened just north of $38 million. The writing was on the wall. And the wall was knocked over by a slingshotted bird carcass. “Angry Birds” would ultimately make over $350 million worldwide, making it a legitimate hit and surprising everyone. In 2019, “The Angry Birds Movie 2” was released, making another $152 million.

Shane Black still loved “The Nice Guys,” and even wanted to develop the film into a TV series … which was the filmmaker’s original plan anyway. That fell through, too.

In more ways than one, “Nice Guys” fans really, really wanted to flip the bird.