AEW’s MJF Joins Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore 2 in Secret Role

Maxwell Jacob Friedman has kept busy outside of the squared circle. Weeks before he captured the AEW World Championship at AEW Full Gear 2022, MJF was announced to be joining The Iron Claw, starring opposite Zac Efron in what would be his feature film debut. While MJF’s on-screen work in the A24-produced biopic was limited, he received an executive producer credit for his additional contributions behind the camera. Since then, MJF has added credits to his filmography catalog, voicing Killer Croc in Justice League x RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen, Part Two and starring in the upcoming Seth Green independent comedy The Floaters.

AEW’s MJF Joins Happy Gilmore 2

The self-proclaimed generational talent is set to meet another once-in-a-lifetime athlete.

As reported by Deadline, AEW’s Maxwell Jacob Friedman has been cast in Netflix’s Happy Gilmore 2. MJF joins titular star Adam Sandler, Julie Bowen, and Christopher McDonald in the ensemble, all three of which are reprising their roles from the original 1996 film. Rapper Bad Bunny, who is known to wrestling fans for his sporadic matches in WWE, will also appear in the sequel.

Happy Gilmore 2 is MJF’s third film known to the public that is in a stage of production. He filmed scenes for The Floaters earlier this year and also worked on Clark Duke’s , both of which are in post-production now. MJF is reportedly starring alongside Ron Perlman in the latter as Stranglehold‘s big bad duo.

“I genuinely think in five years from now, I’m going to be a guy that people see regularly on their TV screen outside of the professional wrestling landscape,” MJF told ComicBook in a December 2023 interview regarding his future acting ambitions. “Trust me, I love wrestling too much to not still be involved in it. I will most likely still be full-time, but I want to be acting full-time as well by then. I would also like to put out an album by then. I would like to be a well distinguished actor that is recognized as being a great actor that transitioned from wrestling like these greats that did it before me. Like Dwayne, like Batista. Like Cena.”

MJF is currently off of AEW programming. He last competed at AEW All Out earlier this month, defeating Daniel Garcia. Garcia attacked MJF after the match, leading to a stretcher segment that wrote him off of AEW TV for the time being.

Happy Gilmore 2 is currently in production.