1 of 5 | Dave Bautista, seen at March’s Academy Awards in Los Angeles, stars in and produced “Trap House.” File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
Dave Bautista says his new movie, Trap House, in theaters Friday, balances a teen action romp with real danger. Bautista plays a DEA agent whose son uses his father’s resources to rob drug cartels.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Bautista said it was important to keep the action fun while maintaining the stakes of the dangerous activities in which the kids engage.
“It was a bit of a balancing act,” Bautista said. “We wanted it to be a bit of Fast and Furious with a bit of Stand by Me. We wanted to keep the good nature of the kids, the good heart of the kids, a bit of the innocence of the kids.”
After Ray Seale (Bautista) loses a member of his team in a raid, Ray’s son Cody (Jack Champion) leads his friends to follow DEA leads to cartel stashes to provide for the deceased agent’s family.
Using DEA armor and nonlethal rounds presents more danger than in most teen movies. Trap House acknowledges the kids are getting involved with criminals, but as a producer Bautista held the script back from going too dark.
“There were different drafts we went through where one of the kids got killed, and I was like, we can’t do that,” Bautista said. “There was another draft where the kids went to prison. I was like, we can’t do that.”
A potential franchise
Bautista sees the potential for Ray and Cody having further adventures. If that were to come to pass, he sees Trap House becoming Champion’s franchise with Bautista supporting him.
“I’ve always looked at it as a potential franchise, and I knew going forward that whoever we cast as Cody would have to carry the films,” Bautista said. “I just bonded with Jack, like, really fast. We have some deeper things in common, especially us being raised by single parents, single mothers.”
Trap House is the first time Bautista plays a father to a character on screen. He is partnered with a young girl in the My Spy films but they are not related. Ray and Cody’s relationship, as well as Bautista and Champion’s, brought out his fatherly side.
“There was a bit of a mentoring relationship with us, because of Jack being young to this business, and a young man kind of growing in this business,” Bautista said. “I’d been in this business, entertainment, for over 20 years, so a lot of those conversations as well contributed to our performance on screen.”
Trap House almost fell through entirely after it lost the original director, whom Bautista did not name. Bautista called Michael Dowse, who directed him in Stuber, to fill in.
“We had been trying to make this film for years, because my schedule had just gotten so hectic, we just couldn’t find a window to do it,” Bautista said. “We found this one little small window that worked.”
Looking for drama and comedy in action
In a previous interview with UPI, Bautista said he was more interested in dramatic roles like The Last Showgirl than in playing an action hero. With roles like Showgirl few and far between, he finds the drama in the roles he’s offered.
“If I do get a physical role, I look at it and I think, how can I make this more of a dramatic role?” Bautista said. “It’s a champagne problem that people want you to do action films.”
Bautista developed the idea for Trap House with a friend. Gary Scott Thompson and Tom O’Connor wrote the screenplay.
“It all started with something that I kind of created for myself,” Bautista said. “And I wanted to play a dad.”
His reunion with Dowse brought up another film that showcased his versatility. In the action-comedy Stuber, Bautista played a detective who could not drive due to recent eye surgery, so he hires an Uber driver (Kumail Nanjiani).
Stuber allowed Bautista to perform physical comedy due to his character’s limited eyesight, even more so than his humorous role as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy.
“I will go to my grave, saying that Stuber is so underrated,” Bautista said. “I’m still proud of that film, and I hope one day we can actually shoot a sequel, we can create enough interest in it, because I love it, and I love working with Mike, and I love working with Kumail.”
Bautista feels that unfortunate timing cost Stuber theatrical success. It was released in summer 2019, just after Toy Story 4 and Spider-Man: Far From Home, and just before The Lion King but he is grateful people have since discovered it on streaming.
“We’re this tiny little comedy, “Bautista said. “We struggled with marketing. I think a lot of people weren’t sure what the film was.”
‘Highlander’ and ‘Road House 2’
Bautista was looking for dramatic roles when two more opportunities in action movies arose, including Chad Stahelski’s remake of Highlander.
Bautista plays The Kurgan, the immortal villain pursuing MacLeod (Henry Cavill) throughout the centuries.
“I’m giddy just thinking about it,” he said. “I’ve been chasing this role for a very long time, like 10 years plus.”
Stahelski attended the premiere of Bautista’s 2024 film The Killer’s Game, where Bautista told him how much he wanted the role of Kurgan. The director didn’t respond that night but sent him the script later.
Like how John Wick reinvented gunfights and martial arts on screen, Bautista said Stahelski’s Highlander re-imagines swordfights.
“It’s a game changer like John Wick was,” Bautista said. “It’s just something that’s so new and so different, with a true, genuine nod to the original film, but just very different, and very stylized, and very elevated.”
Bautista began sword training while filming a role in Road House 2. Even after decades of wrestling in WWE, he said sword fighting was a new challenge.
“We’re training like hours at a time, and I’m weight training on top of it,” Bautista said. “It’s really, really hard and that’s coming from a guy who did professional wrestling on and off for 20 years, and I’ve done martial arts for even longer.”
While Amazon MGM Studios has not announced which character Bautista plays in the Road House sequel, Bautista said he and co-star Jake Gyllenhaal are also focused on the character work in the action sequel.
“We want it to be more than an action film,” Bautista said, adding that his character is “definitely not a perfect human being, the way that Dalton wasn’t a perfect human being in the first Road House.”
Bautista is impressed by the MMA fighters cast in the sequel, so he is not worried about delivering on the action.
“Jake and I are very much on the same page,” he said. “We want there to be a real story in between all the punches.”
Bautista said he would also consider another superhero role should his Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn offer him one in the DC Universe. There was not a role for him in this year’s Superman.
“If it happens, I will definitely jump all over it,” Bautista said. “They don’t talk to me about anything prematurely.”
