Dwayne Johnson reflected on the experience of playing Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine and his reaction to the film’s box office performance.
Johnson participated in a live recording of The Hollywood Reporters’ Awards Chatter in front of 500 film students at Chapman University in California, with a full transcript made available.
The wide-ranging interview covered Johnson’s adolescence, growing up in a wrestling family, and breaking into the industry, as well as acting once he was established as The Rock.
The format allowed Johnson to expand on his reflection of The Smashing Machine, a project first announced in 2019, where Johnson played the lead role of former MMA fighter Mark Kerr.
The film came out of the Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival with positive reviews, mainly reserved for Johnson’s portrayal in the lead role and expanding his acting chops in a different genre of film.
However, results at the box office did not mirror the reviews, as it fell under projections and led to the lowest opening weekend in Johnson’s film career.
In Johnson’s words, it did not faze him and was not an area of concern:
Even that Friday night when we opened, I went to sleep peacefully and woke up peacefully because it represented this thing. And even though we didn’t do well [at the box office], or as well as we wanted to, it was okay because it just represented the thing I did for me.
Variety lists the movie’s budget at $50 million, but it only generated $19 million at the box office.
It does not appear that the lack of commercial success is going to steer Johnson away from more challenging roles:
For years I would do these other films that were big and fun, Jumanji and Moana, with a happy ending, and I love that still. But what this represented was, “Oh wait, I can do the thing I love, which is to tell stories, but I could also take all this stuff and have a place to put it.” So you ask if I’m going to run towards this? We have a project with Scorsese, a project with Aronofsky. Yes, I’m going to run, put all my shit in that, and continue to challenge myself. Anyway, Smashing Machine, as you see, was an opportunity of a lifetime that did change my life.
Johnson’s next major film will see the actor reprise the role of “Maui” in a live-action adaptation of Disney’s Moana, which is set for release next July.
