There’s a pretty convincing theory making the rounds that Dave Bautista is trying his damnedest to get sacked by Disney. Sparked by the controversial firing of James Gunn from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, he’s been repeatedly taking to Twitter to rightly criticize the House of Mouse for bowing to a pressure campaign from the far right. He hasn’t exactly been mincing his words about his feelings, to the point where it’s plausible that he’s trying to get them to release him from his multi-film contract to play Drax. The theory might have had a little more fuel added to the fire today, too, with Bautista doing the one thing that Disney and Marvel Studios absolutely hate – revealing spoilers about Avengers 4.
In an interview on Good Morning Britain, Bautista began speaking about his return to the MCU despite apparently being killed by Thanos’ snap in Infinity War, saying:
“We definitely see more Guardians in the upcoming Avengers, which we’ve already shot. Oddly enough, I guess I wasn’t supposed to say anything, but I was already saying before Avengers 3 was released that I’d already filmed 4, and I was signed up for Guardians 3. I’ve shot scenes for it, so I must come back somehow. It’s comforting but at the same time I felt a sense of guilt because I don’t know if I was supposed to say anything, and nobody told me not to say anything.”
The Guardians not being permanently dead isn’t a huge surprise, given that everyone knows that Marvel Studios are planning Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but it still feels a bit cavalier to go on TV and start talking about how much you’re going to be in Avengers 4. Plus, his reasoning that nobody’s told him not to say anything feels a bit cheeky. After all, Marvel Studios are notoriously spoiler-averse when it comes to upcoming films, going so far as to create fake scripts for Infinity War to ensure that the cast couldn’t spoil anything (not that it stopped Mark Ruffalo, mind you).
If Bautista does want to remain a fixture in the MCU, he’s skating on some pretty thin ice. After all, given that Drax is currently a small pile of ash on a distant alien world, it’d be really easy to write him out of the franchise after Avengers 4, wouldn’t you say?