Ángel Manuel Soto to Direct ‘The Wrecking Crew’

Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa came up with the concept for them to star in, and Jonathan Tropper wrote the script.

Director Ángel Manuel Soto at a 'Blue Beetle' Fan Screening in London.

Having seen his most recent movie –– DC superhero origin story ‘Blue Beetle’ –– open top of the box office this weekend (with the proviso that it was a relatively soft $25.4 million, less than Warner Bros. was hoping for), director Ángel Manuel Soto has another potential job on the horizon.

According to The Wrap, he’s adding to his To Do list: Soto is now attached to direct buddy action comedy ‘The Wrecking Crew’ for MGM.

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What is ‘The Wrecking Crew’?

Dave Bautista in 'Knock at the Cabin,' directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

While the title has been used before –– cinematically for a Dean Martin-starring Matt Helm movie and a documentary about the legendary group of 1960s session musicians, while there is a Marvel comic with the name –– this is, in fact, the movie that Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa set up back in 2021.

The two actors, who are friends in real life, decided to figure out a movie to work together on.

Bautista put the idea out into the world as a tweet in August of 2021.

The concept has snowballed since then; MGM snapped up the chance to make the movie after a bidding war and it has since been handed to ‘Warrior’ and ‘Banshee’ TV series creator Jonathan Tropper (who wrote ‘The Adam Project’ for Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy) to turn into a script. Jeffrey Fierson, who worked with Momoa on the Netflix series 'Frontier,' will produce.

What’s the story of ‘The Wrecking Crew’?

Jason Momoa as Dante in 'Fast X', directed by Louis Leterrier.

So far, neither MGM nor the potential stars have revealed anything about the plot for this one –– Momoa and Bautista had hoped for something along the lines of ‘Lethal Weapon’.

Perhaps (and this is only our speculation) it’ll focus on a pair of cops who are notoriously destructive in their missions, hence the name. That’s something we can see the pair doing well.

Soto, of course, isn’t David Leitch as the original tweet suggested, but he’s certainly proved he can bring fun and style to the movies he makes, including ‘Beetle’ and his previous effort, ‘Charm City Kings’.

And while no one can work on the movie just yet because of the writers and actors’ strike (Tropper’s script was completed before the Writers Guild of America started its industrial action back in May), Soto has proved to be a director in demand.

In addition to this new potential assignment, he is also attached to work on a new ‘Transformers’ spin-off for Paramount. Soto has been developing that alongside ‘Daredevil’ (Netflix era) writer Marco Ramirez.

Few details are available on that movie, aside from the fact that it won’t be a main franchise entry for ‘Transformers’ but will instead serve as a spin-off focusing on a different story and characters within the robots-in-disguise universe.

We’ll have to wait and see whether either of these movies actually ends up hitting screens, but ‘The Wrecking Crew’ (which had been previously untitled) certainly appears to have taken a positive step forward.