The buddy cop subgenre had been a staple of action cinema for almost 40 years, with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte bringing it to the mainstream in 48 Hrs. before Mel Gibson and Danny Glover came close to perfecting the formula in the first Lethal Weapon.
Taking two wildly polarizing personalities, throwing them into a high stakes situation, peppering their exchanges with barbed dialogue and letting the sparks fly is comfortably one of the simplest, and yet most effective, forms of filmmaking there is.
Dave Bautista has experience in this particular realm having co-starred with Kumail Nanjiani in Stuber, where he once again displayed his underrated comic timing as a hulking and near-blind cop seeking revenge for the death of his partner, who ropes in his hapless cab driver for assistance. The movie itself wasn’t great, but the chemistry between the two leads certainly was.
The former professional wrestler once laughed off the notion of appearing alongside former in-ring rival John Cena in a buddy film, but Bautista has now put forth a tantalizing proposition on social media, which you can check out below.
Having worked together on Season 2 of AppleTV+ sci-fi See and Denis Villenueve’s upcoming epic Dune, Bautista and Momoa must have really hit things off behind the scenes for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Drax the Destroyer to be pitching what sounds like a phenomenal idea for all of the internet to see.
The director of John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw overseeing an action movie that teams Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa up as a bickering odd couple duo? You may as well just take our money right now, and let’s hope that somebody behind the scenes in Hollywood takes note.