Dave Bautista in Knock at the Cabin, 2023. (Photo credit: NBCUniversal)
God of War officially has its new Kratos after weeks after rumours following the re-casting of Walking Dead star Ryan Hurst. Dave Bautista, who had reportedly circling the role, will lead a television show for the first time in a Hollywood career that took off after breaking out as Drax in the MCU over a decade ago.
The show, which is being produced by Amazon MGM as yet another video game adaptation after their successes with Fallout and Secret Levels, has had very muddy production that culminated in Hurst tearing his bicep. Despite Amazon having already spent money on and having shot four episodes, the show requires a multi-season shoot so that particular members of the cast don’t age out of their role should the show take a while to get to its next production season as streaming shows often do. This made it more cost effective for Amazon to eat the loss and recast rather than reschedule production and have to recast other members of the cast later.
Bautista first garnered fame for his work in professional wrestling, becoming WWE’s biggest star in 2005 when he defeated Triple H in the main event of WrestleMania 21 for his first World Championship. Little did Vince McMahon know that ‘WrestleMania Goes Hollywood’ would mean the two champions he crowned that night, Batista and John Cena, would eventually leave to become successful Hollywood actors. Bautista parlayed his WWE fame into big blockbusters such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Spectre, Bladerunner 2049 and the Dune franchise. Bautista has become one of the most reliable character actors in the movies today. While Bautista’s television debut came all the way back in 2006 on an episode of Smallville, coinciding with SmackDown’s move to the CW, and he’s done extensive guest work since, this will be his first full-time forray into television.
God of War is one of the most popular games of this century, and has spawned into its own franchise. Since its debut for PlayStation in 2005, the franchise has sold of 76,000,000 copies.
Jameus Mooney is an entertainment writer for Comicbook Clique, having covered the entertainment industry for years. You can follow him on Twitter here, and Letterboxd here. You can also listen to his horror podcast, The 2:17 Horror Podcast, at the DeathArts XIII YouTube channel.