A big screen adaptation of Gears of War has been in development for years now. One constant in this ever-changing tapestry is Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy), who has made it clear on multiple occasions that he’d love to take on the lead role of Marcus Fenix.
The former wrestler, now perhaps best known as Drax the Destroyer, said last Summer that Fenix would be a “dream role” for him, and has apparently been campaigning pretty hard to make it a reality. While large majority of fans have also backed the casting, it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out.
Bautista took to Twitter to claim that Hollywood has heard his cries to play Fenix, but “they could give [a f**k]!” He went on to say that he really has “tried everything to make this happen.”
Back in June, Bautista won the support of Rod Fergusson, the boss of Gears of War developer The Coalition. He agreed that Bautista would be “awesome” in the role, but made it clear that he has absolutely no power when it comes to casting for the upcoming movie.
Unfortunately, recent rumblings have implied the Gears of War movie might not even feature Marcus Fenix at all. Fergusson recently revealed in an interview that the flick won’t be connected to the games, and will instead focus on an alternate reality, telling a new story with similar themes.
He told IGN:
In order for the movie to be successful, it has to be a great movie first and a Gears movie second. Basically the way that we sort of reconciled that was, we said, ‘oh the movie should be an alternate reality. It should not be dependent on the game story, nor should it influence the game story.’
This doesn’t automatically mean that the movie won’t star Marcus of course, and Fergusson went on to suggest he believes the project should feature prominent characters such as Marcus and Dom, but that decision is once again ultimately out of his hands.
The Gears of War movie has been in development at Universal since 2016, and we’ve heard very little on the project in that time. There are no directors or actors currently attached, and we also don’t know if there’s even a script yet.
To be fair, the simple fact that Universal might not have anything concrete yet could be why Bautista has yet to receive a phone call offering him the part. You hang in there my man, it could happen yet.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.