Kayfabe means that professional wrestling is as much a performance art as it is a sport. As a result, it is perhaps unsurprising that a lot of professional wrestlers have managed to break into other entertainment industries with various degrees of success. For example, Andre the Giant is still remembered with much fondness by a lot of people out there because of his role as the huge but kind-hearted Fezzick in The Princess Bride. Likewise, while Hulk Hogan has long since fallen from the heights of his fame, the fact that he had a Saturday morning cartoon of his own says pretty much everything that interested individuals need to know about his incredible success in the 1980s. With that said, if there is one man who embodies the idea of the professional wrestler who has managed to become a true Hollywood star, there can be no doubt that it would be Dwayne Johnson.
In short, Johnson started out as a professional wrestler. As such, he is still known as the Rock in an interchangeable manner to a lot of people out there. In the early 2000s, Johnson started receiving more and more attention for his acting efforts, with a particularly notable example being the starring role in The Scorpion King that followed his earlier appearance in The Mummy Returns. However, it wasn’t until Johnson played Luke Hobbs in the fifth Fast and Furious movie that his acting career started seeing its greatest surges. Nowadays, there can be no doubt about Johnson’s superstar status, which is founded on not just his action roles but also his appearances in a wide range of family-friendly movies enabled by his general amiability as well as his well-honed sense of humor. As a result, it is no wonder that when people start discussing other professional wrestlers who have since become actors in the present time, they often make comparisons with Dwayne Johnson.
Could Dave Bautista Become the Next Dwayne Johnson?
One excellent example would be Dave Bautista, whose acting career started up in the mid 2000s. It seems safe to say that most people won’t have heard about this, but one of Bautista’s earliest roles was an one-episode appearance on Smallville, which was a show based on the Superman mythos that started up in 2001 and managed to continue until 2011. However, it wasn’t until the 2010s that Bautista started focusing more and more on acting rather than on professional wrestling, with the result that he started showing up in more and more roles. Some examples include but are not limited to roles on Chuck, Riddick, and The Man with the Iron Fist. However, for a lot of people, they will be most familiar with Bautista because of his role as the very literal-minded Drax the Destroyer in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
So far, Bautista has been in a number of very successful movies, but he hasn’t been in one with him in the starring role. Still, it is clear that he has been getting more and more important roles in more and more high-profile movies, meaning that there is interest in seeing where that upward trend will wind up. With that said, while some people might wonder whether Bautista will ever see the same kind of success as Dwayne Johnson, Bautista himself is less than enthused about being compared to either Johnson or John Cena, who is another professional wrestler who has become active in acting. Apparently, Bautista sees both Johnson and Cena as professional wrestling personalities who have remained more or less the same in spite of their transference to a whole new context. In contrast, he sees himself as more of a character actor, meaning that he is more interested in playing unusual, stand-out characters rather than heading up action movies.
As such, while no one can predict the future with perfect accuracy, it seems that Bautista won’t be becoming the next Dwayne Johnson for the foreseeable future. Assuming that he continues to focus on being a character actor who is more interested in the chance to work with well-known film-makers than starring in his own movies, Bautista won’t be pursuing the kind of roles that have propelled Johnson to the forefront of the acting profession in recent times. Still, the future is in flux, meaning that it will be interesting to see how things will change as well as how things will stay the same in the times to come.
What Is Dave Bautista Doing Nowadays Anyways?
Currently, Bautista is involved with at least a couple of upcoming projects that could serve to raise his profile even further. For instance, he is expected to show up in the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie. In fact, his name has been coming up a lot in said context because Bautista has been one of the leading voices in the call for Disney to rehire James Gunn after Gunn was fired because of very tasteless jokes that had been made years and years ago. As such, it should come as no surprise to learn that Bautista was thrilled when Gunn was confirmed to return to the upcoming project. On top of that, it is interesting to note that there is a chance that Bautista could be showing up in a DC Comics movie as well, seeing as how there are reports that Gunn wants him to play Peacemaker in the Suicide Squad follow-up that Gunn is in charge of.
Besides this, Bautista is also set to work with Denis Villeneuve on the 2020 version of Dune, in which he will be playing a secondary antagonist in Glossu Rabban. This isn’t the first time that the sci-fi classic Dune has been adapted for the movie screen. In particular, interested individuals might have come upon Sting as Feyd Rautha on the 1984 version, which was a famous disaster. Under these circumstances, it will be fun to see whether Villeneuve’s version will be able to surpass its predecessor.
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