Dave Bautista’s My Spy Suffers Another Delay

Dave Bautista’s My Spy will face another delay as STX made the decision to move the premiere to April 17th. Deadline reported the news of the shift as the company identified an opportunity to own a date on the calendar after Trolls World Tour moved into the April 10th window. The Trolls movie was supposed to enter theaters on the 17th of that month, but Universal decided to slot the best option into the Easter box office weekend. This all comes after the company elected to move the latest Bond film, No Time to Die, to November because of box office fears around the Coronavirus. Bond fans even wrote the film’s distributors pleading for the film to be held until the global health issue has been completely resolved. STX has no such worries about My Spy and is trying to make the most of it.

Back in July of last year, the spy movie was pushed from an August release date to a January holding date. From there, it was moved again to March, and now it will be heading to theaters in the states on the 17th of next month. That’s a long road for this film, but the modest budget ($18 million) and decent returns have a lot of people behind the film hopeful about its performance. Bautista has more to gain from this film than any other he’s been in because the WWE star is a producer on the project. He talked about how much that consideration meant to him at CinemaCon last year.

“You let me contribute, you kept your word, and you were so easy to deal within so supportive from Day One.” Bautista told STFXFilms exec Dan Fogelson. “Me being involved, down to everything, down to the casting of this beautiful young talented woman, was just amazing for me.”

Even with all the recent success, the Guardians of the Galaxy star isn’t trying to hear himself compared to WWE contemporaries like The Rock or John Cena.

“Do not compare me to The Rock or John Cena. Everyone does it,” he mentioned in a previous interview. “Those guys are wrestlers who became movie stars. I’m … something else. I was a wrestler. Now, I’m an actor… Rock was, in a way, a movie star before he was even a movie star. There is something about him that’s really special. I’d never take that away from him. Would I consider him a great actor? F— no.”

My Spy stars Bautista as JJ, a hardened CIA operative who finds himself at the mercy of Sophie (Chloe Coleman), a precocious 9-year-old girl, after he is sent undercover to surveil her family. The film is directed by Peter Segal (The Longest Yard, 50 First Dates), with a cast that also includes Kristen Schaal, Ken Jeong, and Parisa Fitz-Henley.