How Dave Bautista manifested his dream career after Marvel as a romantic leading man

Dave Bautista has figured out the secret to success.

The professional wrestler-turned-actor made headlines last year when he said he'd "never had an offer to do a rom-com," which prompted him to wonder if he was too "unattractive" to be considered for those kinds of roles. But now, only a year and a half later, he's the lead in the romantic action movie The Killer's Game (in theaters Sept. 13), and he tells Entertainment Weekly he's starring in a "couple" romantic comedies that are in development right now (a "straight rom-com" with Ryan Reynolds' production company Maximum Effort, and an "action rom-com" with the Russo brothers' production company AGBO). So, what's his secret to making his dream come true in record time?

It's simple: Bautista just spoke out loud about what he wanted. He announced his retirement from playing Drax the Destroyer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and expressed his desire to play romantic leading men. He's proud of how he took his career into his own hands by speaking his truth and believes his comments helped shift people's perspective of what he could do as an actor.

"I think that sometimes people just need to hear it from you, and it is not that they're against it, but until they hear it, they just don't think of it," Bautista tells Entertainment Weekly. "A lot of people didn't know I was interested and probably didn't know or care if I had been getting offers. It just wasn't something that was on their minds. And I put it on their minds, and now it's started happening after I made that statement. It's very validating. Especially in this business, it means a lot to me."

But as he reflects on his recent post-Marvel career (2023's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 marked his last appearance), Bautista realizes that he hasn't really been thinking about the big picture. "Oh man, it's weird — I don't know if I've ever had a clear direction in thinking that I want my career to go any way," he says. "I've always just kind of put certain pieces of the puzzle together — maybe one day I'll have the puzzle put together, but right now, it's always just little pieces."

Those "little pieces" include looking for "roles and genres" that interest him in the short-term — like rom-coms and romantic leading men. "Sometimes I wish I had more of a clear-cut direction, but I do know what I want my career to be," he says. "When I wrapped up things with Marvel, I did make a conscious decision to start turning down supporting roles and start focusing on lead roles, or I'm just always going to be a supporting actor."

He credits Mahershala Ali with inspiring him to realize he had more control over the roles he could get. "I want to be a leading actor, and I had to start looking for the leading roles that make sense," Bautista says. "I want to do a little bit of everything because I'm a fan of a little bit of everything — I want to do family films, but I want to do action films, but I want to do dramatic films, and I want to do rom-coms. I don't want to be limited. I want to be able to step into any role."

His ambition comes from a deep love of acting but also a necessity — he knows he can't keep taking on the same roles upon which he's built his career. "I'm not the great, big, muscular guy I used to be," he says. "I'm not going to get action roles into my 50s." He also admits that he's not a fan of action movies, which is why he wants to branch out. "I guess I look like that guy who just couldn't wait until the next Fast & Furious movie came out, but I love small, contained indie dramas. I want to be a real and respected actor. I have anxiety. I'm constantly thinking, 'This is going to be my last project; the phone's going to stop ringing.'"

That's why he's proud of The Killer's Game: it's the first time he'll be seen as a true romantic lead. The highly-stylized comedic action romance stars Bautista as professional hitman Joe, who ironically saves the life of star dancer Maize (Sofia Boutella) while carrying out a hit during her performance. But just as Joe and Maize fall in love, Joe is mistakenly diagnosed with a terminal illness and decides to take a hit out on himself rather than wait to die slowly and painfully. When he learns that he's actually going to live, he must fight off an army of his assassin colleagues and win back the love of his life.

Bautista says this movie is "very much" his way to break into the romance genre, allowing audience to see a new side of him while also delivering the action they expect. "This is my vehicle; this is my segue, absolutely," he adds. "To be honest with you, it's a rom-com disguised as an action film. That's exactly what it is."

The Killer's Game has been in development since the mid-’90s, with many actors, including Wesley Snipes, Michael Keaton, and Jason Statham, originally attached to the star. The script floated in and out of Bautista's orbit multiple times for almost a decade until he finally came on board because of the romance at the center of it. But when stuntman J. J. Perry was hired as the director, Bautista became "concerned."

"Because I wasn't looking for an action film," he says. "I only knew him from directing one film, Day Shift with Jamie Foxx, and I liked it a lot, but I was really worried that he was just going to focus in on the action. I was so concerned that this was going to turn into a poor man's John Wick."

His worry vanished immediately during his first conversation with Perry. "One of the first things he said to me was, 'The reason I love this script is because there's a romance at the middle of it,'" Bautista remembers. "And I was like, 'Phew, all right!' We're on the same page — he gets it. And the more we talked, the more I fell in love with J.J. Perry because we realized we were both trying to prove the same thing: 'People know I can do action. This is what I haven't proven myself in.'"

Bautista laughs as he adds, "We're like two beat-up guys who come from kind of the same stunt background, and where he's trying to prove himself as a director, I'm trying to prove myself as an actor."

The next piece of the puzzle was finding the perfect leading lady — and Bautista only had eyes for one. "When I first got the script for The Killer's Game, years and years ago, with the dancing and the character, Sofia immediately jumped in my head," he says. "Since then, every time it came back around, it was always me pitching Sofia. It couldn't be anybody else."

The two first met while filming 2018's Hotel Artemis — Bautista says they shared a scene together but never interacted on camera — and he was struck by how she was "so real and easy to talk to." But casting her as Maize in The Killer's Game proved to be more difficult than he thought due to her schedule... and so he tapped back into his power of making things happen.

"They brought forth other actresses, great actresses, but they're just not Maize," Bautista remembers thinking. "I couldn't imagine anyone else in this role, and so I pouted and bitched and moaned and groaned and pushed and agreed to move my schedule around and whatever we had to do to get her there. We finally came down to these very limited dates where she could work, and I said, 'Let's do it. I don't care what it takes,' and so we did."

While he admits it was "just a nightmare trying to figure out the schedule" and a "chaotic" filming experience due to the limited days they had Boutella, he doesn't regret anything. "We fought to be there together," he says, adding that their comfort and support of each other translates into their onscreen chemistry. "I thought it was super cute to see us together. That's all I could think of when I see us together — and I'm not a cutesy person."

Now that he's finally crossing romance and rom-coms off his constantly evolving career to-do list, he knows what he wants to do next. And he's ready to speak it out loud.

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"I really, really want to direct a film," he reveals. "And I'm going to make it happen. It's probably because I'm somewhat of a control freak — I want to make my own film, and I want to control everything. And I love working with actors, fine-tuning performances, and challenging people."

After searching for the right script for "years" without success, Bautista finally decided to just write his own. "I got someone to help me write it, and the idea is Good Will Hunting set to a Fleetwood Mac song," he says. "It's not going to be a massive movie — it's going to be a very low budget, very contained indie film. I want to take this film to the festivals."

And despite last year's retirement announcement, he's also not ruling out a return to Marvel — or DC, now that his Guardians of the Galaxy friend is running the rival comic book studio.

"I want to work with James Gunn again, but it's just got to be the right character and make sense," Bautista says. "I'm a geek, man. I love sci-fi; I love the superhero world. I want [video game franchise adaptation] Gears of War — I've been chasing that for years and years because I want to play the character Marcus Fenix, and I think I'll do him justice. And I'm not afraid to say it out loud. I want that damn role."

Your move, Hollywood.