Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Blind Items Revealed #2

September 4, 2018

This former athlete turned actor is talking a lot of smack, but if he doesn't show up for work, he will be in breach of contract and no studio would hire him after that.

Dave Bautista

24 comments:

Brayson87 said...

Love Drax

sandybrook said...

Maybe, maybe not. He can always make amends with WWE and they'd be glad to put him in one of their B movies.

totaji said...

Ex athelete is dumb asshole, news at 11.

Anonymous said...

Well, he used to wrestle on Smackdown, so of course he is talking smack.

Angela said...

He wouldn't be unemployable if he doesn't show up for work. In this precise situation, Bautista has explained extensively his reasons.
He can be unemployable if he does talk a lot of smack about a major studio, because no studio enjoys the prospect direct criticism.

Once again, the site can't even maintain a modicum of consistency between its various blinds. "Sure, the guy has defended a child porn loving director. Sure, he has directly criticized Disney and even announced he considered leaving the franchise if he's allowed to. But, as a studio head, I'm drawing the line at an actor not showing up for work! Now, that's a real serious crime."

Mac said...

Ehhh, I was going to explain to Angela how breech of contracts and insurance riders work for actors on big budget films, and how serious him not showing up for work would be to his career, and would leave him virtually un hirable and uninsurable. But why bother?

Brayson87 said...

Everyone has had a friend who turned out to be a scumbag, sh!t happens.

Angela said...

Yes, Neal, explain it to me... I'm so sure you can with your inside knowledge on the industry :D

Could you, for instance, kindly explain to me how Bautista would not be showing up for work when there is currently no schedule to start shooting Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.?

The project is currently on hold. It was announced on August 24, ten days before the blind.

https://deadline.com/2018/08/guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3-pre-production-crew-dismissed-as-project-goes-on-hold-1202452104/

It's definitely delayed and it won't start production before 2019. Originally, it was supposed to be a 2020 release, so it may have not entered production this year even before Gunn was let go. The rumor mill is actually that Marvel is waiting for the Disney-Fox merger to be completed. A few Disney executives plan to retire at this moment, including Alan Horn, who was responsible for firing James Gunn. This would allow Marvel to rehire Gunn while preserving Horn's susceptibility.

If you suggest he could be fired from Avengers 4 because he didn't show up on set, he has actually completed his performance, and the film is currently in post. James Gunn wasn't supposed to direct Avengers 4 anyway.

Brayson87 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
OKay said...

@Angela All that you say is true. But Neal's point is, being in breach costs the production money. The insurance companies don't like to pay out and will therefore not insure an actor who willfully does not fulfill the terms of his contract. If DB doesn't show up for work WHENEVER GG3 starts filming, he will be in breach and no big studio will touch him. He also looks like a troublemaker, and again isn't likely to get hired as a result. That simple enough for you?

Angela said...

Neal's point is bullshit, as usual. It would cost the production money if nobody is already aware that Bautista doesn't intend to show up on set and if they start production on a very short notice (which they won't). The fact is that Bautista has been very vocal about all of this in his interviews and public statements, and my take is that his manager or his agent has also given Disney a warning about how he wishes to be freed from his contract if Gunn isn't reinstated as the director.

If they decided to start production and they suddenly "realized" that Bautista isn't on the set, it wouldn't result in Bautista being blacklisted, as anybody is already aware he wants to support Gunn, and to make a point, even if he loses a well-paid part in a major franchise. It would instead look like a low blow by Disney - "You want to stick to your word? We'll have bailiffs who will attest you weren't there on set, and you'll be fired. And we totally didn't think of recasting the part or putting a new character instead of Drax because you took us by surprise..."

Also, do you remember the day in 2013 where Nathan Fillion was a no-show on the set of Castle because of "back problems" and it resulted in him getting fired and blacklisted?
No? Me neither. Everybody knew that Fillion had requested a four-day workweek on the show. He wasn't fired, while, as the lead of the show, he was in most of scenes, which made it harder to first shoot scenes where he didn't appear. The show was actually renewed for two more seasons after that, and he even got written in his contract for season 8 that he wouldn't have to spend more than two days a week filming with Stana Katic, something he had requested.
And you know what's happened after Castle was canceled by ABC in 2016? He's now in a new show called The Rookie, for ABC... Yeah, that's what happen to troublemakers who aren't likely to get hired as a result...

Mac said...

Because notifying the network you have a documented medical problem and can only work X amount of hours is totally analogous to refusing to show up for filming because your pedo buddy got fired. lol

This guy isn't even an actor, just muscles in makeup who lucked into a niche role (was it really luck, or is he in the pedo gang?). His career is already severely limited. Let him follow through on this action when they schedule shooting and see how long it takes to fire/sue him, and how many studios will rush forward to cast him.

Mac said...

Look up what happened to Kim Basinger when she refused to show up for filming.

Mac said...

@cee Kay - Angela doesn't care, but thanks anyway.

Angela said...

Dave Bautista is not an actor? And there were people who reported that Basinger wasn't on set. Neal, I'm really sorry you didn't regal me with all your insight about the film and TV industry, because we're missing out on a lot of wisdom...

Dave Bautista surprised me by his turn in the first sequence of Blade Runner 2049. Of course, his scenes end up with a big fight, because you don't cast a former wrestler in a sci-fi project with a lot of action if you don't need him to fight. But, before that, he a melancholic and world-weary performance with a lot of dialog, the kind of stuff that may not get him Marlon Brando comparisons, but turns out to be deeper than what you could expect from the guy. He was totally believable as an aging "farmer," or more exactly as an exhausted Replicant who poses as an aging farmer. He's a good actor, and has much more range than his looks would suggest.

Then, Kim Basinger is typically the example that an idiot would use. Sure, she had to pay (and had to declare bankruptcy) because she had signed out to be the star of the Boxing Helena project (after Madonna dropped out, but Madonna had an ironclad contract) and left it shortly before production started (which is totally different from the Bautista situation).
But Basinger was so much "blacklisted" as a result that she won an Oscar for LA Confidential four years later, something that nobody would have bet on in the early nineties. Meanwhile, Jennifer Chambers Lynch, who was the director and was responsible for suing Basinger, didn't direct anything else for another 15 years, and her second film as actually coproduced by her dad, David Lynch.

Mac said...

LOL, yes I often hear the Bautista - Brando comparison. LOL
Bautista is not even remotely in the league of Kim Basinger. A good lawsuit and he will end up in the gutter somewhere, or wrestling in back room shows in Tijuana.
You are truly an idiot. but hey, lots of empty words beats any actual knowledge on the subject you are pontificating on, and heaven forbid you actually ever learn something.

I hope it plays out so you can see just how stupid you are, but we all know Bautista isn't going to quit or refuse to show up. This is all he has got. But I do hope he does.

Angela said...

I'm sometimes called an idiot, but it's always a pleasure to be called an idiot by a guy who first claimed that behaving like this will damage the career of Bautista, making in the process a comparison with Kim Basinger.

In the eighties, Kim Basinger was regarded as a lousy actress (actually more a model than an actress), who was mostly known for her turns in Never Say Never Again, 9 1/2 Weeks and Batman. Sure, there was also The Natural, plus some obscure Altman project and a rather underrated Blake Edwards comedy (Blind Date), but she was mostly regarded at the time as a sexpot with no talent. From 1986 to 1994, she got five Razzie nominations, which is a bulletproof mark that she was fodder for cheap jokes at the time. Recent equivalents would be Kate Upton, Megan Fox, or Jessica Alba rather than Charlize Theron.

TC said...

The difference is Basinger became a better actress and eventually won an Academy Award. Bautista has peaked or soon will peak.

Angela said...

You obviously didn't see Blade Runner 2049. Bautista also played the same character in Blade Runner 2048, a web short that was supposed to fill the gaps with the original.

Also, a reminder for those who don't follow the blind items that closely: last July, a 4Chan trolling campaign resulted in James Gunn being fired from Disney (he had written and directed the first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and was supposed to handle GotG Vol. 3). The main cast from the Guardians, with Bautista being the most vocal about it (he even wants to leave the franchise because of that), expressed their disapproval about this decision and asked Disney to rehire him.
The trolling campaign had found old tweets by Gunn where he made lousy jokes about child molesting. If you go to 4Chan, you can see that the users who browsed his tweets didn't seriously consider Gunn as a pedophile, but were looking to damage his reputation, as Gunn was spending more and more time on Twitter criticizing Donald Trump.
Since the day Gunn was fired, this site mysteriously got access to a trove of stories involving Gunn, which suggest that he had done much worse than these jokes. He would share child porn videos, he had sexual fantasies that he forced on his girlfriends, etc. Between the blinds and the reveals, there hasn't been a week without a James Gunn mention here. The site (or at least the "source" for this blind) is trying to support the 4Chan campaign and to fuel the rumors.

This Dave Bautista story is just a continuation of the same narrative. As I said, Bautista won't lose his job and then be impossible to hire if he doesn't show up for work tomorrow or next week, for one simple reason, that the writer had obviously missed. There's currently no work on GotG 3, and no discussion about how to fire the guy. The pre-production crew was dismissed as the project was delayed. It will probably resume when a director is attached again to the project, but nobody is currently working on the film, and it's unlikely to evolve before quite a time (presumably when the merger between Disney and Fox is completed).
And, by the way, no, this isn't an automatic procedure when a director leaves a project. The next Bond film just lost Danny Boyle, and they haven't decided on the name of the new director, but pre-production in Namibia and casting are still under way, even without a director.

TC said...

Bautista doesn't have the charisma or likability to do anything outside of the niche SF roles he has done. He'll never be an 80's Arnie, maybe an 80's Dolph Lundgren at best.

Paul Saint John said...

Angela, do you seriously believe that Disney would fire James Gunn over a 4Chan thread? Now, who's trolling here?
Disney, a safe refuge for pedos everywhere, wouldn't have fired a guy who was making billions for them over a couple of pedo-friendly tweets.
Somehow, Roilandt and Dan Harmon were spared by Adult Swim for much more repulsive material and comments also posted on 4chan, Tweeter, etc.
Anybody with a working brain would surmise that Gunn was dangerous property even for a pedo den mascarading as a corporation like Disney.

Cree said...

I wouldnt mind him not popping up in any more movied. He's defending Gunn more than Gunn defends himself.

Cree said...

movies*

Smits said...

Angela seems way to invested and angry about this conversation.

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