John Cena, being who he is, is one of those actors who’s always gonna be a little bit typecast. Whether it’s a beefy cop trying to save his girlfriend, or a beefy boyfriend who shows up at a house party, or an (Oscar nominated!) beefy bull in an animated kids’ movie, we know what to expect from Cena nowadays. But for his next picture, Cena’s taking on a role with nuance, with subtlety, where he can really flex his emoting — oh, wait, no, he’s playing Duke Nukem.

Cena is currently the top choice, according to Variety, for Paramount’s upcoming movie adaptation of the popular video game character whose main attributes are smoking cigars, shooting stuff, and spouting B-movie one-liners. Duke Nukem made his first appearance in 1991’s video game of the same name and has been in 19 games since. He’s a pretty popular character who’s seen his popularity wane in the years it took for the public to realize his character is just maybe a liiiittle bit sexist with all that waving-money-at-women stuff.

But, listen, I trust John Cena to be one of those charming lads who gets it when it comes to how a society as woke as ours is now might not warm to a Duke Nukem adaptation that’s 100 percent faithful to the original. Plus, Cena’s funny. Pretty much the only way you could do Nukem now would be to really go for it with the comedy angle and lean into the silliness of it all. But hopefully they change absolutely nothing about that extremely square haircut.

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