Peacemaker stepped into the big screen DC Universe with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, and it wasn’t too long before the character jumped into his own TV series. When Peacemaker first appeared, it was John Cena in the role, and he has continued to excel as the character, especially in season 2. That’s why it was so surprising to hear Gunn recently reveal that Cena wasn’t who he originally wrote the role for, and now that person has addressed why he had to turn the Peacemaker part down.
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Gunn revealed that it was actually Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) who was the person he had in mind while writing the role of Peacemaker, but it ultimately didn’t work out. ComicBook had the chance to speak to Bautista and Director J.J. Perry about their new action-adventure film Afterburn, where Bautista revealed he wanted to play the Peacemaker part and tried to make it work, but couldn’t ultimately make it happen.
“I have to say, that one. I really wanted to do that part. He (Gunn) wrote that part for me, and it was meant for me, and it just became a scheduling thing where I just couldn’t do it, because I was doing Army of the Dead,” Bautista said. “And so it was a scheduling issue that we just could not figure out.”
Blessing in Disguise
While there is a part of him that would have loved to play Peacemaker, Bautista also looks at it like a blessing in disguise now that he’s seen what Cena has done with the role. “And I think it was great. It was a blessing in disguise that I didn’t do that, because I have to say, I have to be honest, there’s no way that I would have been able to do that role like John. He’s just perfect for it, you know, and I wouldn’t have done it justice, and it wouldn’t have been as successful,” Bautista said.
“So, look, and I am, I’m saying that with a bit of envy, you know, I would love it,” Bautista said. “I just wouldn’t have been able to do the same thing that John does to bring to that character. It wouldn’t have been the same. It wouldn’t have been as good. I can honestly say it wouldn’t have been as good.”
A Different World
While Peacemaker is certainly a unique world, so is the world of Afterburn, which is actually based on the original graphic novel by Scott Chitwood and Wayne Nichols. Afterburn takes place 10 years after the world was hit by a solar flare, which has removed electronics from most equations and has led to various dictators and tyrants taking over parts of the world for themselves. Perry and Bautista worked together previously on Killer’s Game, and they soon went to work on figuring out how to bring the big elements of Afterburn to the big screen and establish this world.
“The biggest challenge for me, I think, also dealing with like the tone of this. You start to ask yourself a million questions about what happens when you just lose power, you lose technology. So even as we were filming, we were kind of trying to figure out those puzzles,” Bautista said. “Well, what would happen if we didn’t have this, and how would you deal with that? So it’s kind of a fun experiment to even just sit around and think about that. What would you do if you lost electricity and technology?”
“So I didn’t even know it was a comic book until Dave brought it to me, and then I was like, I did a deep dive. I read the script a few times, and I realized, oh, it’s a comic book. Turns out the guy who wrote the comic book is from my hometown. He’s from Houston, Texas, and he called me and we just cut it up right away,” Perry said. “So getting, like Dave said, the world-building of the post-apocalyptic thing, but also the treasure hunter aspect of it, because look, I work on a lot of action movies, but this for me was more of an action adventure. It was treasure hunting, problem solving. You know, the character Jake was not a Navy SEAL or a Ranger or anything like that. He’s a badass, and a guy who could get himself in a little bit of trouble, but also badass enough to get himself out of it.”
Afterburner hits theaters on September 19.
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