Dave Bautista Has His Own Fast & Furious Franchise Plan?

Dave Bautista has big new plans for his career.

By Faith McKay | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

dave bautista

Dave Bautista’s career is on the rise. It’s true that he’s perhaps not as easily recognized by the mainstream yet. His biggest role so far was as Drax on Guardians of the Galaxy. That has been a major role for Marvel, but he wore full-body makeup. Still, he was recently in director Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead for Netflix and has signed on for the major Rian Johnson sequel, Knives Out 2, also for Netflix. That movie is highly anticipated and already respected after the first movie proved itself so thoroughly with audiences and critics. So now, questions surround what his next moves will be. He’s said he doesn’t see himself playing Drax much longer. If the star wants to grow his career as far as he can go, what are his next steps? Well, according to insider Daniel Richtman, Dave Bautista sees his next move as starting his own franchise, of a sort.

The insider hears that Dave Bautista wants to make Army of the Dead his own version of a Fast & Furious franchise. This makes it sound like the star has Vin Diesel or Dwayne Johnson dreams for his career. Is that possible for the actor to achieve with the zombie film? The insider didn’t share more about Dave Bautista’s thoughts. It would be interesting to know why Bautista thinks the zombie movies are his next steps to that level of fame. On one hand, the original movie did well for the streaming service. It was a movie from director Zack Snyder, who has said that he sees potential for many films in the world. But is the movie with a zombie tiger bound to become something that reaches Fast & Furious levels of success?

army of the dead poster

To be fair, the insider said only that Dave Bautista wants the series to become his Fast & Furious franchise, in a sense. So perhaps that means the actor wants Army of the Dead to develop in a long-standing franchise but doesn’t necessarily see it being that successful. After all, Fast & Furious is an outlier. It’s not easy to replicate that kind of success. It’s also not easy to judge the success of content on streaming against what we see at the box office for an in-theaters production.

From what we can tell, the Dave Bautista movie Army of the Dead did quite well on Netflix. However, it’s hard to compare to Fast & Furious. There are only a few franchises that reach that level of success. There’s Marvel, Star Wars, DC, and there’s Fast & Furious. In one of the most recent installments, The Fate of the Furious, the franchise brought in $1.239 billion at the worldwide box office. Meanwhile, Army of the Dead is one of the top performers on Netflix. But does that put it in the same sphere of financial success as Fast & Furious? Is Dave Bautista right in thinking that he can reach that level of success with an Army of the Dead franchise? It’s really hard to say, since streaming services have changed how we are able to judge that kind of success and fame. It will be interesting to see what Netflix decides to do with Army of the Dead moving forward and if Dave Bautista decides to continue with the zombie movies.