What has Dave Bautista said about playing Marcus Fenix in the ‘Gears of War’ movie adaptation?

The new trailer for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery just dropped, and the film’s cast is just as stacked as the first Knives Out film. The star-studded cast includes acting heavyweights Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, and Dave Bautista. Bautista is no stranger to popular franchises (Guardians of the Galaxy ring any bells?) but there’s another movie franchise that he’s been dying to be a part of for years.

Netflix announced a live-action film and animated series adaptation of the popular video game franchise Gears of War after years of speculation. Different directors and screenwriters have been attached to adaptations in the past, notably Underworld‘s Len Wiseman in 2007 and Avatar: The Way of Water‘s Shane Salerno in 2017, but despite rumors of Netflix acquiring the rights to the franchise from Universal, it seemed destined to rot in development hell.

What has Dave Bautista said about ‘Gears of War?’

Although attempts to bring Gears of War to the screen have failed in the past, the franchise has had a big supporter in Bautista. As early as 2018, the actor told GameSpot that he had been pursuing a Gears of War movie for years and said that playing Marcus Fenix would be a “dream role” for him. In the interview, he explained the rights were owned by Universal and that he’d “been knocking on their door and badgering them” about the role for years at this point and laughingly said the studio was “sick” of his persistence.

We know that he continued his endeavor to play Fenix for years, even bringing up a possible adaptation in an important meeting with Universal about joining the Fast & Furious films. In a May 2021 interview with Collider, he told the outlet, “I don’t make any pretense about it. 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. They wanted to talk to me about Fast & Furious, and I said, ‘I’m not interested, let’s talk about Marcus Fenix.”

He went on to say that the Universal executives were a little shocked by how straightforward he was but that he didn’t want to pretend he wanted a Fast & Furious role when he was really excited about Gears of War. “I’m not putting down anything else, I’m just saying [Gears] is way more interesting to me. I don’t want to pretend like I’m actually interested in something I’m not when there’s something I’m actually really excited about that you guys have under control.”

After fighting hard for years, fans are hoping to see Bautista in the Netflix film as Fenix. The actor definitely seems committed to the role and we know a starring role in the Gears of War movie would be a dream come true for both Bautista and fans.