If Dwayne Johnson actually goes indie and turning into an artiste after working with Benny Safdie on “The Smashing Machine,” the one logical subsequent step could be to reunite The Rock with Safdie in an excellent stranger position: The Rooster Man.
Coming in a short time off Johnson’s awards buzz for “The Smashing Machine” and Safdie’s Greatest Director win at Venice the place the movie made its world premiere, Safdie and Johnson are reuniting once more for a package deal that will star Johnson and that Safdie would write and direct, a person with data of the venture informed IndieWire. It’s about to be shopped to patrons ( you A24).
The movie is named “Lizard Music,” and it’s primarily based on a 1976 younger grownup science fiction novel by creator Daniel Pinkwater. Suffice it to say, the premise is bonkers. It’s a few boy who stays up late watching TV, he stumbles throughout a broadcast that includes precise lizards enjoying music in a band. As he tries to study extra about them, he meets The Rooster Man (Johnson), who’s conscious of the lizards and could also be from outer house and about to guide an invasion. The official logline does little to make it extra sensical:
When a boy left to his personal gadgets stumbles upon a secret late-night broadcast of lizards enjoying otherworldly music, a hidden door to the extraordinary swings open. His seek for solutions leads him to the eccentric and kooky Rooster Man and his beloved companion, a seventy-year-old rooster named Claudia — two kindred spirits who’ve additionally glimpsed the not possible. United by this shared imaginative and prescient, they set off on an journey that begins as a hunt for a hidden society however blossoms into one thing far better: a voyage by way of invisible worlds, sudden harmonies, and the unbreakable bond between misplaced souls who uncover magic not solely in what they discover, however in one another.
The Rock enjoying an MMA fighter in a biopic appears throughout the realm of chance, however no matter that is positively seems to be taking him out of his wheelhouse. Johnson would additionally produce the movie by way of his Seven Bucks Productions, and he’d be teaming with Safdie and “Smashing Machine” producer David Koplan.
Evaluations for “The Smashing Machine” have been robust, with IndieWire writing that the movie is a “candy duet between a remarkably unembellished Johnson and a blazingly good, blue-collar and freshly blown-out Emily Blunt.” And although its not your typical awards bait, we additionally informed you to consider the hype The Rock was cooking. A24 efficiently charted Brendan Fraser and “The Whale” to an Oscar by rebranding Fraser as a severe actor, and the distributor is utilizing the identical blueprint for Johnson.
Deadline first reported the information of the package deal.