If there’s a more perfect real-life embodiment of a soldier from Gears of War than Dave Bautista, then we haven’t seen them. It helps that the actor is insanely gung-ho about playing Marcus Fenix in a film version of the game, but Universal, which has control of the rights, has yet to get an actual film rolling despite having one of the biggest action stars in Hollywood wanting to star in it. In fact, Bautista is so dedicated to starring in a Gears of War movie, despite the fact that he’s already in the game, that he brushed off talks to be in one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises, Fast and Furious.
“I don’t make any pretense about it,” Bautista told Collider (via IGN) when talking about his desire to also be cast as the Batman villain Bane. “I had a chance to get a meeting at WB … they were talking to me about this and that, and I said, ‘Hey, let’s talk about Bane.’ That happened to me one other time in my career. I had a meeting at Universal, and they wanted to talk to me about Fast and the Furious, and I said, ‘I’m not interested. Let’s talk about Marcus Fenix.’”
Now, there’s no telling when this meeting took place, but Universal picked up the rights to Gears in 2016. So Fast and Furious was already a big deal and Bautista may not have been quite the headliner yet, so his turning it down would be potentially a big deal. Of course, now he barely needs yet another franchise to show up in. His breakout role in Guardians of the Galaxy obviously places him in the biggest franchise there is, but the actor is also launching a new franchise with Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead and showed up or will show up in the likes of Blade Runner, James Bond, Knives Out, and Dune. Clearly, he’s hot right now.
As for the Gears of War movie, there is no telling when we will get it or if Dave Bautista will actually be in it. A film has been in the works since 2007, but no one has been able to crack the nut. Universal has been developing the product since it acquired the rights, but there hasn’t been much word on it at all. Bautista may be pushing for a job that will never actually materialize.
