Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is well-known for his professional wrestling profession, in addition to being the smoldering star of a few of the finest motion motion pictures, however his upcoming A24 launch is a complete different form of beast that almost wasn’t made. Earlier than The Smashing Machine lastly punched via delays and doubt, director Benny Safdie tried a really old-school transfer to maintain the dream alive by mailing the previous WWE star a bit of Mark Kerr historical past. However sadly, the package deal by no means arrived.
Whereas selling their 2025 film schedule launch, the pair spoke with Leisure Weekly in a joint interview, reealing Safdie had tracked down a classic ’90s yellow Nautica sweater Kerr really wore—miraculously in Johnson’s dimension—and mailed it with a handwritten word about their long-gestating biopic. The Black Adam star’s response was equal components bemused and crushed:
I by no means bought it! Somebody’s going to seek out the word sometime, someplace, being auctioned off. He despatched it with this lovely word about, ‘I do not know what is going on to occur with this mission, however I want you effectively with this, and I hope it is me [who directs it], however right here, take this [sweater].’ And I by no means bought it. However that is among the many, many issues that makes this complete journey so kismet and needed to occur, as a result of this movie modified our lives.
Safdie laughed in settlement with the Jumanji star. The director then added:
Every little thing occurs for a motive. After we lastly sat down and stated, ‘Let’s do that factor,’ we each have been within the good place to actually perceive Mark higher. We made the film when it needed to be made and the way it needed to be made.
It’s heartening to see each the actor and the filmmaker keep upbeat concerning the misplaced piece of historical past. After years within the making, the film is lastly right here. Possibly all the pieces actually does occur for a motive, or it is a “giant dose of copium.”
The misrouted sweater actually captures the film’s themes of perseverance, discovering the precise second, and making an attempt once more till it lastly works. A couple of years again, Johnson reached out to Safdie after watching HBO’s 2002 documentary about Kerr. He could not shake off the fighter’s contradictions: he was a pressure within the ring, however exterior of it, he was soft-spoken and trying to find one thing extra. Safdie needed to dig deeper into the stuff the documentary left out—these behind-the-scenes moments of relationships, relapses, and private struggles that you just wouldn’t catch on digicam.
That’s the film audiences are about to get. The Smashing Machine traces Kerr’s late-’90s peak and the brutal aftershocks of painkiller dependancy, the push-pull love story with Daybreak Staples (performed by Emily Blunt), and the price of being “probably the most dominant” within the ring till you’re not. Safdie says he, Johnson, and Blunt turned shut with Kerr and Daybreak to honor the emotional reality somewhat than a strict transcript. Kerr and his household noticed an early minimize, and in keeping with the filmmakers, their response mattered most.
Dwayne Johnson’s bodily transformation has been a headline in itself, with intense make-up that leaves The Rock almost unrecognizable. I used to be on the fence about The Smashing Machine at first, however the forged and crew’s new feedback, the bittersweet story of the misplaced shirt, and the early critiques have me totally on board for the A24 drama arriving October 3