Come On, Hollywood, Let Dave Bautista Play Ernest Hemingway Already

Today’s wrestling thespians are not like they used to be. Back in the day, Hulk Hogan was barely credible playing other wrestlers in movies, much less Mr. Nanny. A modern pugilist can do it all. Right now we have three bona fide wrasslin’ movie stars: Dwayne Johnson, John Cena, and Dave Bautista. They can do action, but they can also do comedy, some light drama, maybe even some romance, if someone would let them. So when Bautista, who’s said he’s probably done with Marvel, announced that he really wants to play Ernest Hemingway, it wasn’t like Macho Man Randy Savage demanding he play Macbeth. In fact, it made some sense.

Bautista was speaking to Polygon about Army of the Dead, Zack Snyder’s new Vegas zombie pic when the subject of a dream role came up. “I’ve given a lot of thought to inspirational stories I could play, interesting stories I could play. And the one that seems to keep coming back to me is Ernest Hemingway,” Bautista said. “If I could play any character, I still think it would be him. I think I could do him justice. I think he’s so interesting, everything about his life, and the way he lived, and also the way he died. It’s just very intriguing, his ideas are intriguing to me.”

There was another role he’s been more seeking more publicly. “I’ve also been very vocal lately about playing Bane in the DC Universe, and I still feel very strongly that I could do that character justice,” he said. “So fiction vs. non-fiction, that would be Bane or Ernest Hemingway.”

Perhaps you never thought the WWE guy who played Drax the Destroyer would be a perfect fit for the guy who wrote A Moveable Feast, but, now that he mentions it, it doesn’t sound so far-fetched. Hemingway was one of literature’s more macho superstars — a burly hard drinker whose succinct, no-frills prose style belies his tough-guy image.

So, if you have yet to watch Ken Burns’ new documentary series on Hemingway, do so while trying to imagine the guy from My Spy embodying him onscreen. Get on this biopic, cineastes, and let’s get the guy who once got into a backstage fight with Ric Flair his Oscar.