Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is getting ready to star in another video game movie, according to a recent interview with Men’s Journal about his upcoming superhero movie Black Adam. The Men’s Journal interview specifically mentions that Johnson has worked with Microsoft and Xbox in the past, which seems like a very pointed question unless that’s who he’s teaming up with next. While the first option that springs to mind might be Gears of War, Johnson only offered a few hints in his interview answer.
“I can’t tell you which game in particular we’re doing, but there will be an announcement this year,” Johnson told Men’s Journal. “We’re going to bring one of the biggest, most badass games to the screen—one that I’ve played for years. I’m really excited to bring it to fans around the world. Of course we’re going to do right by our gamer friends—but really we’re just going to make a great movie.”
Whatever the movie, it won’t be Johnson’s first foray into video games on film. That honor goes to Doom, the incredibly misbegotten shooter adaptation from 2005. More recently, The Rock starred in Rampage, which was loosely based on the arcade game and was somehow much worse than Doom. (And this isn’t even counting Johnson’s roles in the Jumanji remakes where he’s technically a video game character.) With such a checkered past, there’s not a lot of reasons to be optimistic about Johnson’s new video game project, but here are our worst guesses:
Viva Piñata
Ideally, the Piñatas here would look exactly as detailed as the animals from Disney’s 2019 The Lion King remake and Dwayne Johnson would be the farmer who takes care of them. Wait. Maybe this is a great idea?
Fortnite
No, Fortnite is not owned by Microsoft, but it is one of the easiest answers here. After all, The Rock is already in Fortnite, so the idea that he’s making a movie based on the game isn’t much of a leap. On the other hand, it’s not totally clear why Epic would want to make a Fortnite movie when all the movies are desperate to be in Fortnite.
Doom
The Rock may be a nigh untouchable A-lister now, but that wasn’t always true. Back in his early movie career, just after leaving the WWE (the first time), Johnson was in a few poorly received movies, with Doom being the highest profile and most joked about. What is more The Rock in 2022 than going back to his most notorious flop to try to prove he can fix it? It even fits the Microsoft requirement, thanks to the company’s acquisition of Bethesda.
Mario
This also isn’t a Microsoft game, but the idea of Dwayne Johnson playing a live-action version of Wario in the, otherwise entirely animated, Mario movie is extremely funny.
Source: Polygon
