Fans are gleefully fantasy casting the impending Gears of War movie, and they’ve got some great pitches for the lead roles.
In most fans’ minds, it’s already canon, that Dave Bautista will lead the cast as the series main, Marcus Fenix. Fenix is a hard and irascible soldier whose capability in combat keeps his small team of COGs functioning even in the direst of circumstances. He’s joined, in the first trilogy of Gears titles, by the similarly capable, and just as heavily muscled, Delta Squad members, consisting of Augustus Cole, Damon Baird, and Dominic Santiago.
With Bautista’s role already broadly agreed upon by the Gears fanbase, they’re now setting their sights on the rest of the team—and have some people in mind.
Knowing that Terry Crews has expressed interest in a Gears adaptation spurred the fandom into a frenzy, as they imagined the hulking actor donning his COG armor and taking his action experience to the streets of Sera. The idea of a Bautista/Crews team-up is an absolute dream for many of the fandom’s most ardent gamers, and they wasted no time in sharing their delight with the world.
Twitter, through all the chaos, is awash with gleeful tweets from eager Gears fans. Many of the franchise’s followers are placing Crews in the role of Augustus Cole, also known as the “Cole Train,” and the role couldn’t be more suited to the former footballer.
Cole, like Crews, is a former athlete, but instead of turning his talent to Hollywood, he used his fast feet and bulk to dominate in the military.
For his part, Crews is openly delighted at the thought of his involvement in the Gears adaptation. In an interview with Gizmodo, the 54-year-old actor said he would accept the role “in a heartbeat” and emphasized how delighted he would be to take part in the “amazing project” based on an “amazing game.”
Not everyone is equally thrilled at the thought of Crews as Cole. Quite a few of the Gears franchise’s most enduring fans would love to see the voice actor who originally brought the character to life make the transition from the game to the big screen. It’s no coincidence that Cole is the spitting image of his voice actor, Lester Speight, and many people would prefer the continuity of keeping Speight in the role.
There are a few issues with this idea, of course, the most obvious being Speight’s age. The actor is far from old, but his 59 years might not translate well when it comes to the demanding action scenes necessary in a film like Gears of War. That certainly doesn’t exclude him from the running—particularly when you consider the mere six-year age gap between him and the 53-year-old Bautista—but it does make his involvement (as Cole, at least) less likely.
There are several other popular picks who’ve been pitched as additions to Delta-One. Fans firmly believe that Bautista should be joined by Crews as Cole Train, The Rock as Dom, and John Cena as Baird. All of these fan castings would be great picks for the film, though game creator Cliff Bleszinski would prefer a Latino actor in the role of Dom.
There’s still very little news on the actual intended castings for the Gears of War movie, but fans have all but made their minds up. It’s far from set in stone, but if the team at Netflix ignores fan demands and casts a completely different lineup of actors in the lead roles, they could be facing a furious fanbase when the film finally makes its way to streaming.