Dave Bautista Leaving Marvel After Guardians Of The Galaxy 3?
Could Dave Bautista be leaving the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3? The actor weighs in on his future.
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Those who were hoping for many, many more years of Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe might want to pump the brakes of expectation just a little. We might not be getting too much of the character on screen and the future for Drax in the MCU is more than a little unclear. In an interview with Digital Spy Bautista laid how the plan for Drax, or lack thereof within Marvel, and it really isn’t looking all that great. In fact, the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie might actually be his last in the universe.
As part of the Digital Spy interview, Dave Bautista was asked point-blank about what the future held for Drax. He didn’t mix words about the plan, though it started mostly from a point of being an unknown. Bautista doesn’t seem to have much of a clue about what’s going to happen with the character or the Guardians in general after this next movie. In fact, he says he doesn’t even know what the next movie is about. Bautista clarified that at one point there was a James Gunn script he had seen for the film, but that was years ago and well before the events of Marvel’s Phase Three which culminated in Avengers: Endgame. According to Dave Bautista, the previous script wouldn’t make sense in the current iteration of the universe.
In the interview, a couple of other key points come out around Dave Bautista and the plans for Drax going forward. He says that a movie involving Drax and Mantis was a possibility at one point, but there hasn’t been any movement on that end. It’s a shame seeing as how those two characters would have been ripe for a comedic buddy movie centered around Drax’s literal sense of the world and Mantis’s ability to bring the truth out of everyone. But that doesn’t appear in the cards.
Dave Bautista also intimates that he doesn’t have anything contractually in place after the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie either. This, of course, would lend itself to uncertainty around the future. And it’s unclear if Bautista even wants that many more turns as the character. Recently, he was asked about the possibility of doing a Drax television series on Disney+. Considering the path of productions in the MCU, getting his own television show had to at least been considered.
But Dave Bautista dismissed the idea and actually said, without much ambiguity that he wouldn’t want to do it. Among the primary concerns? The time spent on the character’s makeup alone would have made it a non-starter.
So, when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 comes out, reportedly sometime in 2023, it might be the last we see of Drax and all his comedic toughness. In the meantime, Dave Bautista is as busy as ever. This week his Army of the Dead will release this week on Netflix. And then there is Dune which is coming out later this year. So maybe the guy doesn’t need Marvel at all and we could see him winding down his time in the MCU.
