The Big Picture

Friendship and chemistry between Dave Bautista & Sofia Boutella drove a successful collaboration in
The Killer’s Game
.
Bautista & Boutella felt validated acting with Sir Ben Kingsley, who added a prestigious presence on set.
Comedy performance was nerve-wracking for Boutella in
The Killer’s Game
, while tough action was flawlessly executed by the cast.

Few actors have proven their action chops with greater authority and grace than Dave Bautista and Sofia Boutella. Bautista made a name for himself as the broad-shouldered, ever-relatable Drax in the modern classic Guardians of the Galaxy. Since then, he’s protected small children, replicants, and a ride-share driver — all with tenacity and often with a fabulous sense of humor. Boutella has saved the galaxy more than once — first with the Federation, then throughout the combined 6 hours and 17 minutes (and counting!) of Zack Snyder’s original epic space opera Rebel Moon. After a decade of friendship and tearing it up on the screen individually, it’s only right these two juggernauts of action join forces for the upcoming action-comedy The Killer’s Game.

The Killer’s Game follows Bautista’s Joe Flood, a veteran assassin who is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and authorizes a kill on himself. After ordering the kill, an army of former colleagues pounce, and a new piece of information comes to light.

Ahead of the movie’s theatrical release, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to sit down with Boutella and Bautista to chat about sharing the screen with iconic acting legends, performing massive action on a tight schedule, and an earnest desire to make a movie together for the past ten years. Check out the conversation in the video above or you can read the transcript below.

Objectively, ‘Die Hard’ Is A Christmas Movie
“It’s a bullshit debate”
Image via 20th Century Fox

SOFIA BOUTELLA: [Referring to Steve Weintraub’s T-shirt] What happened at the Nakatomi Plaza Christmas party in 1988? Tell me more about that.

I think you know it, but you don’t know it off the top of your head.

BOUTELLA: Go ahead. I have no idea. [To Bautista] Do you know it?

DAVE BAUTISTA: “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.”

It’s a Die Hard reference.

BOUTELLA: Oh, I see. Did he come out in France? I was too young.

I’m gonna say I don’t know.

BOUTELLA: I’m joking. Of course, it did. But no, I don’t know it.

What I like about these kinds of shirts is when it’s not saying Die Hard , but it’s referencing.

BAUTISTA: Do we agree that it’s a Christmas movie?

I have spoken to people involved in the making of the film, and it is 100% a Christmas movie.

BAUTISTA: Right?!

I think it’s a bullshit debate.

BAUTISTA: It’s a bullshit debate. Thank you!

Dave Bautista and Sofia Boutella Have Adorable Chemistry

I really want to start with congrats on the movie, and I really mean it when I say you two are fucking great together. It’s because of your chemistry and the relationship that everything else works. When did you both realize, “We’re pretty good together?”

BOUTELLA: Before we started filming.

BAUTISTA: Yeah, like way before. We wanted to do this movie together. We just knew it would work. We knew we would work.

BOUTELLA: It makes sense. We knew since the first time we met over 10 years ago, I think, that we were going to do this.

One of the things that I love is that it’s not often when the leading man is carrying his love interest for, like, half the movie. I’m like, “Oh, Dave’s kind of strong.” [Laughs]

BAUTISTA: That was her idea. She thought it would be kind of cute if we had this thing where she just jumped into my arms and kind of did a little swirly thing and I carried her. I thought it was super adorable. It makes us seem like a couple, and it was our thing. So, it was her idea.

BOUTELLA: I’m sad they didn’t keep the ones where I carry him, but we did them also. He jumped into my arms, and I swirled around.

BAUTISTA: It didn’t make me look like a leading man.

BOUTELLA: They decided afterward to cut them, but we did it. I can lift him.

Wait, did you actually film this?

BOUTELLA: No! I like to believe that she can.

Oh, 100%. Absolutely.

Dave Bautista Says Working With Ben Kingsley Was “Intimidating but Validating”
“We were all nervous before meeting him.”
Image via Lionsgate

So I know that you pride yourself on getting better as an actor all the time. I know that’s something that’s very important to you. For the two of you, I’m a huge fan of Sir Ben [Kingsley], so what was it like for you to share scenes with Sir Ben, who’s kind of a good actor?

BAUTISTA: He’s kind of an icon. It was nerve-wracking and intimidating but also very validating. For me, it was very validating because I always gauge myself by who I work with. It’s not so much where I’m at in my career; I gauge my success on who I’m able to work with, and this says a lot when I can share a scene with Sir Ben.

BOUTELLA: We were all nervous before meeting him.

BAUTISTA: Everybody on set.

BOUTELLA: All of us. We were like, “He’s here!” Everybody was whispering that he got to set finally. Then you meet him and he’s just very kind, but you can feel that he has a presence to him, Sir Ben Kingsley.

BAUTISTA: The days he was there were very different than other days when he wasn’t.

BOUTELLA: When you look at his body of work, and I grew up watching his films, he’s an icon.

I’ve interviewed him a few times, and every single time I’ve interviewed him, I always walk in dead serious. Like, it’s Sir Ben.

For Sofia Boutella, Comedy Is Harder Than Action
Image via Lionsgate

So I’m curious: What shot or sequence in this film ended up being the toughest to pull off, and what shot or sequence has been the backbreaker in your career?

BOUTELLA: Weirdly enough, I think comedy is quite hard. I was nervous hopping into this. My character doesn’t have as much, but that was something that made me feel a bit nervous. It’s not necessarily, for me, the whole physical [aspect]. The thing that seems to be the hardest for people — for me — was the comedy. I wanted those little moments to land. I also wanted the vulnerability to really be relatable for people when they watch, to understand that vulnerable place that she’s coming from when she’s with him and when he breaks up with her, and just put yourself in those shoes, I guess.

BAUTISTA: I thought you were going to say it was the dancing. It looks so exhausting. Some of the dancers are exhausted.

BOUTELLA: It was hard, but I don’t know if it’s because I’m used. It’s not hard, you just have to do it over and over again.

BAUTISTA: For me, it looked impossible.

BOUTELLA: I was just really scared to not land the humor. It was my first time. Have you done something comedic like this before?

BAUTISTA: No. I’ve done a comedy, but it wasn’t like this. I think for me, in this film, it was really kind of the breakup scene. I don’t know. It was hard. Emotionally, it was kind of challenging, but also they had this camera going around, which made it harder to focus. [Laughs]

I know the shot you’re talking about.

After 23 Takes, Dave Bautista’s Set Piece Was Cut From ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’
Image via Marvel Studios

BAUTISTA: And in my career, the most difficult scene I’ve ever shot was a scene in the first Guardians [of the Galaxy]. It was a scene that took 23 takes to do. It was a big action scene, and it was a scene they never ended up using in the film.

BOUTELLA: Oh no! What was it?

BAUTISTA: It was this great big action scene. It was like 100 people involved, and it was a oner. The camera was moving through, and you know how if one person is just a little bit off, you have to do it again. We did it 23 times, and everybody was just exhausted and beat up, and they never ended up using it in the film. It was exhausting.

I think we should text James [Gunn] and be like, “F you.”

BOUTELLA: For me, it must have been something in The Mummy because you add up to it the costume and the time that it took to get the costume done. I don’t know which sequence. I think it was something probably underwater that we had to rehearse a lot and then do.

‘The Killer’s Game’ Director J.J. Perry Brings The Action
Image via Lionsgate

One of the things that I am blown away by with this film is J.J. [Perry] told me you shot in 42 days or something crazy. This movie is just so much action and you’re in so much action. How did you do this?

BAUTISTA: I won’t take credit for any of that. I just kind of showed up when I was told to be there, and J.J. had to organize everything in two units and keep track of everything that was going on. We had to kind of fill in gaps here and there, but we had to shoot a lot of the same stuff at once. So, we had two units kind of shooting action scenes, we’re shooting actions here, we’re kind of filling in the gaps, and they edited it together and made it seem like one big cohesive [scene]. But a lot of the stuff was shot separately because it was just so much. It was such a big undertaking to do in 42 days.

It’s crazy. I thought they were going to be like, “Oh, this was 60 or 70 days.”

BAUTISTA: Oh, it’s crazy. I told J.J., “Be very careful because people are always gonna expect this from you.” I know this was taxing on him, and I was like, “They know that you can accomplish this in 42 days, and they’re going to want that over and over and over and over.” [Laughs] I was like, “Man, just don’t get stuck in that. You’re gonna kill yourself, man.”

The Killer’s Game blasts into theaters on September 13.

Get Tickets