Despite enjoying his time working with John Cena on The Suicide Squad so much that he wrote an entire spinoff series for HBO Max that’s currently in the midst of production, Dave Bautista still remains James Gunn’s favorite wrestler-turned-actor. The two have clearly formed a close bond, which extended to the star threatening to quit the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Guardians of the Galaxy series if Gunn wasn’t rehired, while he also came very close to reuniting with the filmmaker on the DCEU’s soft reboot.
Bautista may have signalled his intentions to tackle more challenging roles, and has even dismissed his former in-ring peer Dwayne Johnson as a terrible actor, but the 52 year-old is hardly above lending his name to a blockbuster or two. As well as his recurring part in the MCU, Bautista has also shown up in James Bond movie Spectre, while he’s got Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead arriving this year.
There was a lot of speculation that he could have ended up playing Bane in The Batman as well, something Bautista even leaned into himself when he admitted he pitched for the role, and a new rumor now claims that the former WWE star is in talks to portray the muffled mercenary in a future Dark Knight-related project, although there’s not much more information than that.
So far, we know that The Batman is set to launch a multi-film series, while Michael Keaton of all people is poised to remain the DCEU’s canonical Dark Knight in the main timeline. We’re getting at least two Batman franchises moving forward, then, so there’s plenty of time and opportunity to cast Bautista as Bane.
