Dave Bautista's Undercover Thriller 'Traphouse' Sounds Like A Blast

If you take a look at Dave Bautista's filmography over the past ten years or so, you'll find a mixture of high profile franchise projects (including the highest grossing movie ever) and low budget action flicks, a mixture that has given him a chance to stretch himself as a performer and lead some B-movies while honing his strengths. In other words, Bautista is putting in the work, and he's quietly establishing himself between Marvel projects.

And while the actor already has several things already in the pipeline (including Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune), a new report says he's found another new movie project to star in and produce: an undercover thriller called Traphouse, which is written by the guy who wrote 2001's The Fast and The Furious.

Deadline reports that Bautista will produce and star in Traphouse, a new thriller from The Fast and The Furious writer Gary Scott Thompson, who also has writing credits on movies like Hollow Man and TV shows like Las Vegas. Here's the synopsis:

[Traphouse] follows an undercover DEA agent and his partner who embark on a game of cat and mouse with an audacious, and surprising group of thieves — their own rebellious teenagers, who have begun robbing from a dangerous cartel, using their parents' tactics and top-secret intel to do it.

That sounds like a blending of a sorta-goofy premise and thrilling action that could end up resulting in the perfect alchemy between those two concepts. A DEA agent facing off against his own teenaged kids? Who are robbing a cartel with moves they learned from their parents? Sounds a bit like Marvel's Runaways without the superpowers, but you can go ahead and sign me the eff up. This also seems like a notable return to form for Thompson, a writer who hasn't had any produced screenplays that I've cared about since...well, frankly, since The Fast and The Furious.

In a statement, Bautista said he's been developing this project for years and singled out Thompson's ability to "infuse our original fast-paced action movie with tons of heart," which is what he did so well with the original Fast film nearly twenty years ago. Say what you will about that movie and what it spawned, but when I watch it, I still genuinely feel for those characters; here's hoping he's able to do something similar with Traphouse.

No director has been announced yet, but we'll keep you posted when we learn more.