Bautista Announced For Next Major Film Role

Former WWE Superstar Dave Bautista has signed on as the lead for the new film "Cooler," a thriller written and directed by Drew Pearce, according to Deadline.

Bautista will star as a bouncer in a South Beach club who is blackmailed into locating a stolen safe full of narcotics before the Miami police come to retrieve the safe's contents. Production is expected to begin sometime next summer. 

Pearce is best known for penning the scripts for blockbuster hits like "Iron Man 3," the "Fast & Furious" spin-off "Hobbs & Shaw" (which featured another WWE alum, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), and "Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation." Behind the camera, he helmed "Hotel Artemis," which also had Bautista as part of the cast, and the Marvel One-Shot short film "All Hail the King."

Bautista's latest film – M. Night Shyamalan's "Knock at the Cabin" — dropped its first trailer last week with a February release date on the calendar. He can also be seen later this year in Netflix's "Glass Onion: Knives Out 2" and his 2023 agenda includes the Netflix film "Unleashed," the sequel to Denis Villeneuve's "Dune," "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" and an untitled buddy cop comedy co-starring Jason Momoa.