Dwayne Johnson Ready to Rock a Shaolin-Style Martial-Arts Saga
Dwayne Johnson (Photo: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
As we’ve previously noted — in aptly exhaustive fashion — Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is Hollywood’s hardest-working man, thanks to a line-up of forthcoming projects that’ll seemingly take him the better part of the next decade to complete. And his plate is possibly about to get a little bit more full.
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According to Mike Fleming Jr. at Deadline, Johnson, via his Seven Bucks Productions, has sold Sony on a new film called Son of Shaolin, which is based on an as-yet-unwritten graphic novel by Jay Longino. The fact that Johnson is now getting firm studio commitments about properties that don’t even exist yet speaks to his industry clout. And though he’s currently only on board as a producer, it sounds like Sony wouldn’t mind if he eventually decided to make it one of his many starring vehicles.
As Fleming notes, however, Universal also wants a piece of The Rock, as they’re courting him for a possible lead role in their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which will tie into their ongoing plans for a classic monster movie universe (the first installment of which will be the Tom Cruise-headlined The Mummy, followed by a Johnny Depp-led The Invisible Man). That would certainly be inspired casting, though considering how many action extravaganzas he’s already committed to for the foreseeable future, it’s hard to imagine him howling at the moon anytime soon.
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For the complete rundown of Johnson’s Son of Shaolin, which sounds like a modernized mash-up of contemporary drama and kung-fu beat-‘em-up in a Big Trouble in Little China mold, check out Deadline’s report. And for a current dose of Johnson’s larger-than-life charisma, you can see him in theaters opposite Kevin Hart in Central Intelligence now.
Dwayne Johnson talks about what drew him to his ‘Central Intelligence’ role:
