John Cena Starring In New Action Comedy From Taken Director

As his relatively bland and one-dimensional turn as Jakob Toretto in Fast & Furious 9 showed, John Cena tends to deliver his most forgettable work when he’s not allowed to lean into his underrated talent for deadpan comedy, with his performance as The Suicide Squad‘s Peacemaker just two months later fully displaying the disconnect.

The scene-stealing supporting player headlines his own spinoff series next January when Peacemaker comes to HBO Max, while he’s expected to return for the tenth and eleventh chapters in The Fast Saga. Cena also plays a major role in Matthew Vaughn’s espionage epic Argylle and recently signed on to take a detour into dramatic territory as a presidential candidate in political thriller The Independent, but he’s adding yet another project to his plate.

As per Deadline, Cena is in talks to headline action comedy Freelance, which hails from Taken director Pierre Morel. The mid budget effort follows a special forces operative who decides to retire and live a quiet life back home in the United States, but after several years of domestication and family bliss, he comes out of retirement to protect a female journalist as she interviews a dictator.

Of course, the despot has connections to Cena’s character having ordered a hit on his team when he was in the Army, before a military coup is staged in the middle of the interview, forcing the unlikely trio to flee into the jungle to evade their captors. It’s not the worst setup we’ve ever heard, so Freelance could turn out to be decent if Cena continues to embrace his comic chops.