Dave Bautista Turned Down Suicide Squad, Here’s Why
Dave Bautista skipped out on The Suicide Squad for this reason.
This article is more than 2 years old
Dave Bautista has become one of the most fascinating and compelling wrestlers that transitioned into full-time acting. He has become an incredibly engaging presence as a character actor and is always the highlight of whatever movie he shows up in. Everyone assumed that he would be joining friend and collaborator James Gunn in The Suicide Squad, but there was a very specific reason why he decided to turn down that role.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Dave Bautista revealed that he took another role in a different film instead of the one James Gunn offered him in The Suicide Squad. That film? Army of the Dead, the upcoming zombie movie coming from director Zack Snyder. The actor said he originally wasn’t interested in Army of the Dead, but that soon changed. “Then I read the script and it was a lot deeper and had more layers than I thought,” said Bautista. Apparently, he was attracted to the role for what he could bring to it as an actor.
But that isn’t the only reason Dave Bautista decided to join Army of the Dead. “And also, to be quite frank, I wanted to work with Zack [Snyder],” he said in the interview. Because of that, he decided to reject a role that James Gunn had offered him in The Suicide Squad. However, there does not seem to be any animosity between the actor and James Gunn. The Suicide Squad director even went on a Twitter binge to explain why he believes Dave Bautista is a great actor.
This does lead us to an interesting question: what role would Dave Bautista have played if he decided to sign up for The Suicide Squad instead of Army of the Dead? The one we immediately think of is Peacemaker, the role being played by John Cena. Obviously, that’s because they are both professional wrestlers-turned-actors. It’s possible that one of the other many roles in the movie was offered to Bautista, but if we had to bet, it would have been this one since it seems the most in line with his strengths as an actor.
Instead, Dave Bautista decided to take the lead role in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. That movie is being described as a zombie heist film and will be debuting on Netflix later this year. Snyder has been working on the film for a very long time and is hopeful it will be a breakout hit for him outside of his own contributions to the DC cinematic universe. Hopefully, Bautista will also be providing a great performance in the film. He has yet to disappoint as a leading man and this seems like a wonderful showcase for him.
Though we won’t be seeing Dave Bautista in The Suicide Squad, we are still looking forward to James Gunn getting to go absolutely wild with the property. And Gunn will be reuniting with the once and future Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, so they will definitely be working together again in the future.
