There are over a dozen DUKE NUKEM games out there, playable on various systems, but I have only ever played one of them – 1998's Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, on the original PlayStation. While I had fun playing the game, jumping through time and fighting alien creatures, I did find the overall franchise's habit of lifting one-liners from movies to be irritating – too often in the late '90s I would have people quoting Duke Nukem lines to me that were actually from ARMY OF DARKNESS or THEY LIVE.
Twenty years after my one experience playing Duke Nukem, Paramount and Platinum Dunes are working on a cinematic adaptation – and they may have found the man to star in it.
John Cena is in talks to play Duke Nukem himself, a character who
first appeared in the 1991 eponymous video game, developed by Apogee Software, as a muscular cigar-chomping man who always wears Ray-Bans and sports a flat-top haircut as he fights aliens to save planet Earth by using enormous physical strength and his expertise in firearms.
A professional wrestler with action and comedy acting credits to his name (I know him best for his hilarious role in the Judd Apatow / Amy Schumer movie TRAINWRECK), Cena does seem like the perfect person to bring this character to life. He also has an established relationship with Paramount and Platinum Dunes, having just worked with the companies on the TRANSFORMERS spin-off BUMBLEBEE.
I just hope the DUKE NUKEM movie will take it easy with the movie quotes so I won't have more people telling me lines like "Hail to the king, baby" originated with this character.