For over a decade, WWE Studios’ Marine franchise has served as a showcase film vehicle for some of WWE’s top talents, with John Cena, Ted DiBiase Jr., and Mike “The Miz” Mizanin playing the titular role. Now, WWE Studios and distributor Sony Pictures Home Entertainment are celebrating the imminent release of The Marine 5: Battleground on DVD and Blu-ray with an exclusive teaser clip featuring WWE Superstar Bo Dallas playing the role of a villainous biker.
After the first two installments of The Marine featured John Cena and Ted DiBiase Jr. as lead characters John Triton and Joe Linwood respectively, The Miz took over, starring in The Marine 3: Homefront in 2013, followed by The Marine 4: Moving Target in 2015. But Miz wasn’t the first choice to play the new character Jake Carter in the third installment, as reports previously suggested.
The role was most notably offered to Randy Orton, who was subsequently pulled from The Marine 3 due to a real-life dishonorable discharge from the Marines. According to Cageside Seats , Orton, who was then in his late teens, was court-martialed and sent to a military prison in the late 1990s, supposedly for disobeying a commanding officer and going AWOL twice.
Since The Miz assumed the role that was supposed to go to Orton, he’s made it three straight movies as the lead star with The Marine 5: Battleground , which will be released Tuesday, April 25 for DVD and Blu-ray, following up on its earlier digital release on March 28.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and WWE Studios’ press release for The Marine 5: Battleground offers a brief synopsis of the film, which has The Miz’s character finding work as an emergency medical technician following a tour of duty.
“After returning stateside and now working as an EMT, Jake Carter (Mike “The Miz” Mizanin) finds himself trapped with an injured, marked man he’s sworn to save. As a ruthless biker gang bent on revenge gains speed, Carter must use his killer Marine instincts to end the rampage… or die trying!”
In the above clip, we see Bo Dallas playing a more menacing role than what most of the WWE Universe may be accustomed to seeing. At the time of the making of The Marine 5: Battleground , Dallas was working a villainous, yet comedic gimmick as one-fourth of the now-defunct faction The Social Outcasts, but the teaser shows Dallas appearing dead serious, portraying a biker gang member as he argues with the gang’s leader, played by Sandy Robson.
The clip shows Robson’s character celebrating how “justice has been dealt,” but quickly admonishing Dallas’ character, Alonzo, for killing only one, but not both of their intended targets. The clip ends with Robson, still angry that one of the good guys has gotten away, yelling that “one of them bastards is still out there,” and a final shot of a man laying wounded in a stockroom.
While previous installments of The Marine had mostly featured only one WWE Superstar in the cast, The Marine 5: Battleground stands out for having six WWE talents in the credits. Three other wrestlers — Dallas’ former Social Outcasts colleagues Heath Slater and Curtis Axel, and current SmackDown Women’s Champion Naomi — are cast as biker gang members, while The Miz’s wife Maryse Ouellet-Mizanin is also part of the cast, playing a smaller part as a woman whom Miz’s Marine-turned-EMT character tries to rescue.
Meanwhile, WWE has also done its part to promote The Marine 5’s Blu-ray and DVD release, posting a video last week featuring The Miz, Bo Dallas, Naomi, and Curtis Axel speaking partly in character and hyping up their roles. The video also featured Miz getting serious for a moment, thanking his co-stars and WWE colleagues for joining him in the film.
“I take this time to thank everyone for being in my movie, The Marine 5: Battleground . And to always remember, we are awesome.”
[Featured Image by WWE]