Dwayne Johnson is out to prove himself as a potential Oscar contender with this weekend’s The Smashing Machine, but it looks like The Rock is going to be beaten into submission as Taylor Swift looks set to dance all over his box office debut. While it seemed like the weekend was guaranteed to be Johnson’s thanks to plenty of heavy praise being aimed at the Benny Safdie-directed biopic, Swift’s late-in-the-day addition of Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl to the slate may be about to leave bruises on A24’s MMA flick.
For those who are not externally hooked up to everything Taylor Swift, the 89-minute return to cinemas for the pop star – her first since she dominated screens with the theatrical release of The Eras Tour – will include behind-the-scenes footage, lyric videos, and the world exclusive of her new music video during its strictly one off run out. Despite the unique nature of the release, the projections for the launch movie is expected to draw up to $40 million at the domestic box office, which would be easily enough to lay out Johnson’s movie on the canvas.
While Swift’s movie is essentially a cobbled-together cashgrab, rather than even being the kind of concert movie that has become popular in recent years, Johnson’s much-buzzed transformation into UFC legend Mark Kerr is the kind of gritty, critically hailed movie that will clean up come awards season, but struggles to make an impact on box office numbers. Current projections are pitching The Smashing Machine as taking between $15-$ 20 million according to the most hopeful estimates.
Dwayne Johnson Is About to Give the Performance of His Life
Since his movie debut in The Mummy Returns, Dwayne Johnson has found himself a niche as a tough-guy action hero, who appears in big, brash popcorn movies by the bucketload. From Fast & Furious, through Jumanji, to Rampage and Skyscraper, Johnson’s movies have never really tested out his acting abilities in a way that requires him to be anything more than Dwayne Johnson. The Smashing Machine changes that, with many critics finally accepting that the former wrestling star can act.
Despite having spent his entire career undergoing extensive training of one kind or another, Johnson recently told Variety that The Smashing Machine pushed him to new limits. He said:
“This transformation was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There was a physical transformation, prosthetics, vocal transformation — he has a very specific way of talking. When I first got together with Benny, we watched tapes of Mark, and Benny said, ‘I want to film this and never cut away from you.’ I knew what that meant. He said, ‘I don’t want to cut away. I want to shoot this cinéma vérité, with a prowling camera. You have a great stunt double, but I don’t want to use him.’ So I said, ‘Okay. If Mark gets punched, I’m getting punched.’
“Then he says, ‘DJ, I don’t know if anyone’s told you this… but you need to gain weight.’ I went, ‘Okay.’ I felt that too. Give me 24 hours. I came back, and we looked at Mark again — and realized, his body is a unicorn. I had to put on 30 pounds. Benny said he wanted me to look a bit puffy and I agreed. But it’s not just gaining weight. It’t putting on a quality of muscle that has fast-twitch capacity. He’s a wrestler. It’s not about bodybuilding. I’ve never done so much trap and neck work in my life. Old-school wrestlers with no necks? That’s what I had to do. And I held that weight for three and a half months. Then, two weeks later, I had to roll into Moana. So it was Mark Kerr and Maui. Big dudes.”
While it looks like the weekend box office battle is one that even Johnson cannot win this time around, there is much more at stake for him than a number one spot on the charts. Taylor Swift can steal his thunder, but The Rock is never down and out, and that will be proven when several big awards could be winging their way in his direction.
- Release Date
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October 3, 2025
- Runtime
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123 minutes
- Director
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Benny Safdie