Dave Bautista has had a very interesting career when it comes to his acting roles. Starting out as a massive professional wrestler with WWE, Bautista seemed poised to take similar roles to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. That is to say, muscle-y action roles. And yes, he has definitely done that. But in things like “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Blade Runner 2049,” we’ve seen him add layers to his acting, rising above simple jock-ish performances. And it’s his desire to expand his career even further that almost stopped him from showing up in Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead.”
According to an interview with EW, Bautista was so hellbent on getting into more “juicy” roles, the actor initially turned down Snyder’s offer to appear in “Army of the Dead.” But once he was signed on, not even James Gunn and the offer of a new superhero franchise could sway him away from the zombie-action film.
“I said I wasn’t interested,” Bautista said about turning down the “Army of the Dead” role. “I had this chip on my shoulder and was looking for juicy [dramatic roles]. Then I read the script and it was a lot deeper and had more layers than I thought. And also, to be quite frank, I wanted to work with Zack.”
And it was his desire to work with Snyder and the script for “Army of the Dead” that actually kept Bautista on board when his good friend and collaborator James Gunn came calling. According to the report, Gunn offered Bautista a role in the forthcoming “The Suicide Squad,” and the actor turned it down to stay put in “Army of the Dead.” This is actually incredibly interesting given how loyal Bautista is to Gunn and how the actor publicly asked for a role in the filmmaker’s upcoming DC superhero film well before production even began.
Alas, not even a new superhero film with his “Guardians of the Galaxy” filmmaker is enough to pull Bautista out of Camp Snyder. And now, the “Dawn of the Dead” director is returning to his zombie roots with a new action film coming to Netflix and Snyder has one of the best action stars leading the way.
“Army of the Dead” is slated to arrive in summer 2021, per Netflix.
