One of the better pieces of casting news this year came back in January when it was revealed John Cena is in negotiations to star in the title role in Duke Nukem, a big-screen adaptation of the popular video game franchise at Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes label and Paramount Pictures.
The games follow the adventures of Duke, a muscular cigar-chomping figure who fought aliens in order to save the Earth. The blond and always sunglass wearing character mashed up action hero tropes into one politically incorrect package.
Now, out doing promotional rounds for A Quiet Place, producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller have opened up a bit about the project and what the current status of it is. They reveal they the main issue for them is nailing the project’s tone in the same way “Deadpool” managed to do it, and if they can’t get it right they won’t proceed with it. Form tells Cinema Blend:
“We are working on Duke Nukem right now. It’s going to be about tone. That’s about tone. How do you nail that tone in the way that Deadpool nailed the tone? I think we have to do that and if we don’t get the tone right then we’re not going to make the movie..
You know that having a misogynistic guy in today’s world, how do you make that fun and loveable and at the same time he’s got to be an incredible badass, so those are the things that we’re struggling with and we’re going to try and come out with what I hope is a really fun ride. That’s the goal, is for it to be a really fun ride.”
Form also confirmed that Cena is their guy for ‘Duke’ at the moment, but it’s not a lock:
“Yeah, that’s what we’re working with now. He is. Yes. We don’t have a script yet, so that is confirmed at this point but if he reads the script and he doesn’t like the script I’m sure there’s ways that he could pull out, but right now he’s our guy.”
The film presently doesn’t have a production start date.
