Dave Bautista turned down Fast and Furious to pitch a Gears of War project

Dave Bautista in Army of the Dead
(Image credit: Netflix)

Dave Bautista has revealed that he turned down Fast and Furious to pitch a Gears of War project. 

"I had a meeting at Universal, and they wanted to talk to me about Fast and the Furious. And I said, I'm not interested, let's talk about Marcus Fenix," he told Collider. Marcus Fenix is the main character of the Gears of War video game franchise.  

"I think they were a little put off, but you get a shot, I don't mean to offend anybody, I'm not putting down anything else, I'm just saying, 'this is way more interesting to me,'" Bautista added. "I don't want to pretend I'm actually interested in something I'm not when there's something I'm actually really excited about that you guys have under control… I'm just saying, 'this is what I love, I'm seriously passionate about this, I'd do a good job for you guys on this'… Twice in my career that happened, twice in my career it didn't pan out."

Bautista has talked before about the other time he pitched a character to a studio. At Justice Con, the actor revealed he told Warner Bros. that he wanted to portray Bane – though no project with the character was in the works. 

"I'd love a crack at it. I think I could bring an interesting twist to it and I think I could do the character justice," Bautista said of Bane to Collider. "Not only in performance, but also in physicality… I could do this character justice and really bring a strong performance to him as well, play Bane in a way that's not only menacing and ominous but also freakishly intelligent and just terrifying in that manner. And also, I think that Bane would be the type of character that's so menacing and so terrifying and so intelligent, that he would hardly ever raise his voice."

Bautista can next be seen in Zack Snyder's latest zombie movie Army of the Dead, which arrives to Netflix this May 21. Until then, check out our guide to 2021's upcoming movie release dates

Molly Edwards
Entertainment Writer

I'm an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.