TV News

James Gunn confirms Peacemaker was originally written for another actor before John Cena

By Kevin Fraser

Posted 7 months ago

Last Updated on September 17, 2025

John Cena is Peacemaker. He’s made that role his own like few could. However, James Gunn originally had another actor in mind for the role of Peacemaker: his friend Dave Bautista. On the Howard Stern Show, Gunn revealed that he wrote Peacemaker with the Guardians of the Galaxy star in mind.

“It was Dave Bautista. He’s a good friend of mine,” Gunn said. “Obviously, he plays Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy, and I wrote the character of Peacemaker for him, and we offered him the role, but he was offered two movies, and we weren’t paying him a lot, and so he had to go where the money was.“

Gunn added that he had been a fan of John Cena since Trainwreck, the 2015 comedy starring Amy Schumer and Bill Hader. “I thought he was so funny in that movie,” he said. “I met with him, we talked, we became instant friends, and I’ve worked with him more than any actor because I’ve done two seasons of Peacemaker, The Suicide Squad, and we’re going to be doing more together. He’s a fantastic guy, a fantastic actor.“

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Although I could see Bautista as Peacemaker, Cena was clearly the perfect man for the job. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. What do you think?

The first three episodes of the second season of Peacemaker are currently streaming on HBO Max. Our own Alex Maidy is a big fan of the new season. “Peacemaker was great when it debuted and is even better the second time around,” he wrote. “James Gunn’s DCU is off to a strong start, and the man himself should take pride in having created three distinct projects to kick off his cinematic universe, which are all vastly different and yet impressively high quality. Peacemaker works because John Cena is the perfect blend of muscle and emotional presence, making the ensemble more cohesive than before. I love everything about this series, and I look forward to seeing how this season wraps up, inevitably leading into a third season and other aspects of the DCU.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.

Source: The Howard Stern Show

Tags: Dave Bautista, James Gunn, John Cena, Peacemaker: The Complete First Season

About the Author

Kevin Fraser

News Editor

11,708 Articles Published

Favorite Movies: Alien, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, read more Braveheart, The Bridge on the River Kwai, City of God, Cloud Atlas, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Edge, The Fifth Element, Galaxy Quest, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Godfather Parts I & II, Goodfellas, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Magnificent Seven, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, The Prestige, Prisoners, Psycho, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Rear Window, The Shining, Sorcerer, The Talented Mr. Ripley, There Will be Blood, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Zodiac

Likes: Drawing, cooking, watching movies, trying and failing to come up with read more more items for my likes list.

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