Dave Bautista Shows Off Kratos Training: Three Weeks In, Two Months to Go
Dave Bautista has shared a gym video showing the muscle he is building to play Kratos in Prime Video's adaptation of the God of War video game — and he says he is three weeks into weight training, with two more months to go before he reaches his target.
"Third week in to weight training again," Bautista wrote in the post. "Two more months to get to where I need to be. Like ridin' a bike!" Variety reported the video on 3 September 2026.
Bautista officially signed on to play Kratos on 20 August, stepping in for Ryan Hurst. Hurst, the original Kratos, tore his bicep on set in June and needed surgery that would have pushed production's restart into 2027, according to Variety. Rather than wait, Prime Video recast the role.
Every scene already filmed with Hurst will now be reshot with Bautista. Filming had begun in Vancouver in February. That means the crew is effectively starting over on the Kratos portions of the shoot, on top of the time already lost to Hurst's injury and recovery.
The scale of the production is significant. Prime Video handed God of War a two-season order, with both seasons planned to shoot back-to-back — meaning the cameras are meant to roll straight from the end of Season 1 into Season 2 without a break between them. That kind of commitment is reserved for a platform's biggest bets.
The series adapts the two most recent God of War games (2018's God of War and 2022's Ragnarök), in which Kratos raises his ten-year-old son, Atreus, while battling gods of the Norse pantheon. Callum Vinson plays Atreus. The official logline reads: "Father and son Kratos and Atreus embark on a journey to spread the ashes of their wife and mother, Faye. Through their adventures, Kratos tries to teach his son to be a better god, while Atreus tries to teach his father how to be a better human."
Bautista is a WWE veteran and mixed martial artist who played Drax the Destroyer across several Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers films. He is also set to appear in Road House 2 and the Highlander reboot.
For a Kratos adaptation, the physical demands are the whole conversation. The character is rendered in the games as a towering, ash-skinned warrior, and any live-action version lives or dies on whether the actor can inhabit that silhouette. Bautista's combat-sports background and his years in the Marvel machine give him a running start — but he has given himself a two-month window, not six, and the reshoot clock is already ticking.
