Dave Bautista may already play a major role in one comic book franchise as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Drax, but the former professional wrestler has nonetheless set his sights on the DCEU. After threatening to quit the MCU if James Gunn wasn’t rehired for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3., Bautista was briefly in talks to re-team with the director on The Suicide Squad before the role ironically went to his old WWE rival John Cena.
That hasn’t deterred the Blade Runner 2049 star though, and following on from his admission that he’d pitched the idea of playing Bane in The Batman to Warner Bros. and DC, we’ve heard that they’ve now re-entered talks with an eye to having Bautista don the mask in one of the potential sequels to Matt Reeves’ film.
According to our intel – which comes from the same sources that told us Percy Jackson is being rebooted as a streaming series and National Treasure 3 is happening, both of which were correct – while Reeves never had any intention of using Bane in The Batman, there’s still plenty of work to be done on the stories for the planned follow-ups, and both the studio and Bautista are said to be trying to find a way to fit him in. We’re also told that thanks to the multiverse, there may soon be multiple versions of the villain in the DCEU, such as the Latino Bane we’ve previously heard about.
Of course, we’ve already seen Bane in live-action twice before with Jeep Swenson’s hulking goon in Batman & Robin and Tom Hardy’s cerebral and frequently-unintelligible mercenary in The Dark Knight Rises, but casting Bautista as the fan favorite villain would no doubt present the best of both worlds.
Not only does he possess the sheer size and physicality required, but he’s also shown surprising depth and range as an actor over the last few years. And if Bane does eventually factor into The Batman franchise, then there are few better candidates out there than Dave Bautista.
