Worlds will live, worlds will die. And the DC Universe will never be the same. But that’s no crisis. It’s just what happens when a massive media conglomerate like Warner Bros. Discovery puts two new executives at the top of a studio and tells them to take a different approach. So while the DC Extended Universe certainly has its fans, and many have hopes for future installments, new DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran will have their own agenda.
Since Gunn and Safran’s appointment late last year, fans have been trying to figure out just what that agenda may be, with an announcement of their initial slate of DC projects to come imminently. Unsurprisingly, one item on some fans’ wish lists is the arrival of Guardians of the Galaxy actor Dave Bautista to the DC Universe as Bane, the Batman villain he wanted to play a decade ago. But the actor himself has confirmed that Gunn and Safran have different plans going into this new era of DC.
While doing press for the M. Night Shyamalan movie Knock at the Cabin, the former wrestler revealed that while he had talked to Gunn about playing Bane, the director and his co-head have different priorities.
“I have had conversations with James about that but I think the direction he’s leaning in, completely rebooting that whole universe, he’s starting from scratch and starting younger and fresher and I think you need to do that,” Bautista told Insider. “You need to start to plan for the next 15 years, and I just don’t think you can do that with me.”
“I have to say that I appreciate that because I don’t want to play a character that I can’t bring justice to it,” he continued. “I don’t think at this point in my career that I can bring justice to Bane anymore. I just don’t know if I could handle the physical part, and I don’t think I would have the longevity to plan ahead for films.”
Of course, none of this precludes Bautista from playing a one-off character, someone with fewer demands than the popular Batman baddie. Gunn has shown before that he likes to use actors across projects, most notably his brother Sean Gunn, and has said that he’d like to bring his Guardian cast to the DC Universe.
But Bautista’s revelations do provide a few more pieces to the puzzle of the future DCEU, something that Gunn and Safran have been pretty quiet about so far. We do know that Henry Cavill will not be returning as Superman, as the studio wants a younger Man of Steel. And while a recent video posted by Jason Momoa certainly suggests he’s staying with the company, rumors have been circulating that he’ll be recast as Czarnian bounty hunter Lobo, with someone else becoming Aquaman. But again, nothing has been confirmed by Gunn or Safran about this potential plan.
Is this confusing? Yes. But if you’re enough of a DC fan, you know that reboots like these happen kind of regularly. And unless you’re the Flash, things tend to work out okay in the end.