What’s the story?
This past week, Sheamus took to Twitter to reveal that he’s currently in Vancouver shooting scenes for his role in the Buddy Games movie.
And if, like me, you’ve never heard of this film and haven’t the foggiest idea what it’s about, thankfully Deadline has your back. The Hollywood news site has all the details on what will be Sheamus’ fifth role in the past couple of years.
In case you didn’t know…
Sheamus is no stranger to the silver screen, having made his film debut in 2008’s The Escapist. Since then, he’s enjoyed similar bit-part roles—including a brief cameo as a Celtic zombie warrior in Legend of the Bog alongside Vinnie Jones—before scoring his biggest gig to date when he voiced Rocksteady in last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flick.
Add to that a couple more voice-over roles in WWE’s collaborations with Scooby Doo and The Jetsons, and Sheamus has low-key been assembling a fairly decent movie résumé.
The heart of the matter
As you might have guessed, Buddy Games is indeed a WWE Studios film, although it does boast the pulling power of Josh Duhamel. Fresh off appearing in the latest Transformers flick, Duhamel not only stars in Buddy Games but will be making his directional debut.
Sheamus, meanwhile, will be playing a pawnbroker named Thursty, who is said to hold an "item of importance" whilst also "hiding a secret to be revealed". Very juicy indeed.
What's next?
Given that Sheamus was on Raw on Monday, before jetting out to film in Vancouver on Tuesday, it seems that the intention is to minimise Sheamus’ time out of action.
Which is just as well, because he’s widely expected to be in Raw Tag Title action at SummerSlam on Aug 20. Plus, he still has work to do to build that match in the go-home episode of Raw next week.
Beyond that, though, with Sheamus fast-approaching 40 years of age, perhaps he’s got on eye on making a more permanent transition to Hollywood once his in-ring days are over.
Author’s take
We’ve seen WWE Studios go in-house to fill roles on plenty of occasions in the past, so in many ways, this news just feels like business as usual.
Although it is worth noting that by the sounds of it, it seems like Sheamus will be getting slightly more screen time than he’s previously been afforded in some of his cameo roles. If he manages to knock that opportunity out of the park, it could open up a few more doors in a world outside of WWE.