Road House 2 is the upcoming sequel to the 2024 Prime Video action flick, and while very little has been revealed about it outside of Jake Gyllenhaal’s return and Guy Ritchie being the director, a new potential casting announcement has some very interesting implications for the future of the franchise. The first Road House received fairly mixed reviews, but it was generally seen as a fun and competent action film, without too much going on to make it stand toe-to-toe with the best of the genre.

However, the film did extremely well on Prime Video, leading to this sequel’s announcement in May of last year, just a few months after the movie’s debut on the streaming platform. The film was a remake of the original 1989 Patrick Swayze Road House, and while that movie did get a direct-to-video sequel eventually, it didn’t feature any of the original characters, and will more than likely have very little impact on the story of the new Road House 2, which, based on this new potential casting, is looking to be much more interesting.

Dave Bautista Has Been Offered A Role In Road House 2

There Are No Details Yet On Who He Could Play

As per Variety, WWE wrestler-turned-actor Dave Bautista has been offered an undisclosed role in Road House 2, which neither he nor Amazon have commented on. The casting has been kept pretty тιԍнт-lipped, as the film is still very much in pre-production. Still, Bautista is the first potential new cast member to be announced, outside of Gyllenhaal as Elwood Dalton. As Road House 2‘s story is completely unknown, his character could be anyone, but there are a couple of clues that could help predict what kind of role he could play.

One of the biggest things Bautista is known for these days is the fact that he doesn’t want to be stereotyped into the same kind of roles that other wrestler-turned-actors have, such as John Cena or Dwayne Johnson. He has been very vocal about turning down roles as a big, generic action hero and taking on more challenging and subtle characters in movies that audiences wouldn’t necessarily expect him to embody. Road House is a big, fairly generic action franchise, so it would be easy to see him turn the part down.

Dave Bautista’s Casting Sets Road House Franchise Trend Of Fighters-Turned-Actors

Conor McGregor Was The First After Debuting As Knox

One of the biggest pieces of marketing for the original film was the fact that another fighter, UFC champion Conor McGregor, was cast as the villain, a gang enforcer called Knox, giving him his first on-screen role, which clearly was a huge success. The first Road House‘s ending teased that the character could return for a sequel, but, given recent information that has come to light about McGregor, that now seems exceedingly unlikely. Regardless, Bautista joining the franchise would be the second fighter brought to the series, potentially starting a new trend.

Could Dave Bautista Play A Villain In Road House 2?

This Would Continue The Trend Even Further

Even though Bautista has said that he doesn’t want to be typecast, he has still appeared in plenty of action films throughout his career, and one way that his role in Ritchie’s version of Road House 2 could be a unique challenge for him is if he took over McGregor’s role in its entirety as the main villain. Bautista hasn’t played too many villains throughout his career, with his most significant villainous role being Rabban Harkonnen in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies, but he wasn’t the main antagonist in that project.

If Bautista does appear as a villain in Road House 2, then he will undoubtedly be the main threat, hopefully giving him a lot to work with and plenty of screen time to show off his villainy. McGregor played the main villain of the first movie, so it would only be natural for Bautista, who is undoubtedly a better performer, to elevate the stakes for the second, giving Road House 2 a great actor to make the sequel hit even harder than the first did.