Then again, Dwayne Johnson has been too big to completely fail for a good while now. He’s a highly-paid actor with his own production house and several business ventures that can no doubt act as a buffer even if he has to taste the bitter pill of VOD for a while. Perhaps in recognition that a quick return to his roots was in order, he’s also back with the WWE. He was a major part of the pro wrestling juggernaut’s WrestleMania 40 event. In January 2024, he was also appointed to parent company TKO Group’s board of directors, which grants him far more sway than ever in the WWE … and the UFC, for good measure.
With all this, it seems that Johnson is extremely prepared to ride out a potential career slump on the acting front. He also seems to be partially pivoting away from his usual action-hero muscleman roles. His upcoming projects include a return to the voice role of the goofy demigod Maui in “Moana 2,” and the role of UFC fighter Mark Kerr in writer-director Benny Safdie’s A24 movie “The Smashing Machine.”
If successful, such roles might work in his favor and remind the public that he’s more than just his Instagram, his The Rock persona, and his endless tough guy roles. Time will tell if that’s enough to save the movie leg of his career from VOD hell, but it would certainly be interesting to see The Rock cooking with some serious gas when it comes to peculiar movie roles. After all, the man is a veteran of films like “Be Cool” and “The Southland Tales.” If anyone can reconfigure things with a bit of controlled weirdness, it’s him.
