The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Last Megastar _ Dwayne Johnson

The New Arnold. In the end of the 90s, when Arnie decided to go into politics, Hollywood was panicking. They needed someone equally talented and equally big, just not as big as Steven Seagal. The Rock followed Arnie's playbook to the letter. Action movies, family comedies, wholesome and friendly image of a self-made guy. Hell, he even got a real nod of approval from Schwarzenegger himself. For a whole decade, he pulled off an impossible box office streak, launching and saving franchises left and right. So how did a wrestler guy even become such a megastar? Which movies designed to flop did he save with his face? Did his winning streak actually end? And how did he become the ultimate duct tape for every wobbling franchise? This is Hollywood Lore. Let's go. Dwayne didn't even plan on being The Rock at first. He wanted football, but at the time there was no Instagram. So 24-7 grind wasn't just worth the effort, especially because his father was making real money in wrestling. So he decided to join the family business, a wise move he'll repeat again later, if you know what I mean. His wrestling success didn't come right away. At first, his image was just a cheesy, smiley Hawaiian dude, kind of soft and kind of fake, and fans hated it. That's when the cocky, effortlessly cool The Rock persona was born. And that vibe people just couldn't ignore. Most people think his first film was The Mummy Returns, but technically, nope. His real first film was supposed to be the one with Jet Li. It was even called The Rock's first film internally. Then The Rock gets an offer from The Mummy, and just bails. It looked like it had much more potential for Rock's debut. The studio didn't seem to be bothered by this, leaving only a number in a title, and assigning another rising action star instead. Everyone was happy to see The Rock in The Mummy, and praised his incredible talent and good behavior. The studio liked him so much that before filming, even wrapped, they were already drafting a solo movie just for him. Basically, letting Dwayne cosplay Egyptian Conan the Barbarian. The Rock barely had any screen time in The Mummy. Most of it went to his CGI scorpion clone. Yeah, that one, which was at the time roasted everywhere. Rumor has it that the VFX team couldn't start working until just two weeks before the premiere, had two sandwiches and an empty beer can as a budget, and received daily beatings from the producers. On top of it, there were no face or motion capture of Dwayne, so they were literally animating his eyebrow by hand. The second Mummy made a little less, critics liked it a little less, so as usual, the studio panicked. They froze the franchise, scared the next one would completely bomb. The galaxy brain decision was to make a spinoff, The Scorpion King, hoping Dwayne Johnson could save Brendan Fraser's franchise. Spoiler, it didn't work. Dwayne, by the way, would make a second attempt at preying on Fraser's legacy, but a little later. Production on The Scorpion King actually went pretty smooth. Initially, The Rock's choreographic background helped him switch from chairs to swords real fast. He even knocked out a stunt guy while his character was joyfully ripping dudes apart with bare hands. Haven't seen this part? It's because of the reshoots. The first cut of the film was just 70 minutes, way too short. They added more jokes and cut a ton of blood so Rock's target audience could also enjoy the film. The movie made some money, even with Dwayne Johnson getting a record $5 million paycheck for a newbie lead. That was insane back then. The Scorpion King also sparked his ring name problem for the first time. Using The Rock in the credits meant the film legally had to bring in Vince McMahon as a producer. WWE owned part of that name and usually took 10 to 15% off the top. That headache is exactly why Dwayne later dropped the nickname in movies, but for now, he just deliberately avoided all his wrestling moves and mannerisms. The idea was simple, make it easier for audiences to separate Dwayne Johnson movie actor from The Rock the wrestler. He broke that rule once, the eyebrow raise in the scene with Harem. Couldn't help himself and couldn't help the franchise. At the box office, the movie did fine, just not as fine as they hoped. It cost about $60 million and made three times more. A sequel sat in development hell for years. Official reasons were always the same, bad scripts, Dwayne Johnson being too busy. In the end, the sequel was filmed without him on a modest budget and released directly to home video. In 2003, Dwayne Johnson stumbled with the underrated buddy movie, The Rundown. That film wouldn't be significant if right at the start, Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't pass the torch to The Rock. That cameo wasn't even in the script. Arnold was nearby filming a commercial and someone basically went, hey, wanna pop in real quick? Arnie being the true goat that he is couldn't resist and that's how it happened. And yeah, The Rock actually did have fun on set, mostly because he injured another co-star, again. This time it was Sean William Scott, who The Rock straight up stabbed by accident. And look, that checks out. Sean William Scott is just not a durable human being. Dude almost drowned in a scene where he had to swim away from a barracuda because he didn't know how to swim face down. But it wasn't just Sean William Scott getting wrecked. The Rock's cousin, who was also his stunt double at the time, took damage too. During the cliff fall scene, he messed up his ankle. On the bright side, he and his partner later won a pile of prestigious stunt awards. That might be the only win there was. The film completely face-planted, earning and costing pretty much the same 80 million. Most people blame inflated budget and there's actually a funny story behind it. The film was supposed to take place in Brazil. So very important, people didn't think twice and decided to film in Brazil. But completely unexpectable happened. The entire crew was robbed at gunpoint the moment they left the airport. So all the equipment and money was gone. The studio decided not to gamble with Dwayne Johnson's safety, packed everyone up and ran to Hawaii. Problem is, Hawaii ain't Brazil. So they burned a hell lot of money trying to fake locations and rebuild the movie visually. In the next movie, Walking Tall, Dwayne Johnson was still in full bro mode, polite, professional, and still managed to mess things up. There's a scene where he's supposed to fake smashing a Porsche taillight with glass and blood added later. Apparently, nobody told him that. Like wrestling, movies aren't real. So he actually smashed it. This led to the amusing anecdote that the studio actually had to buy the rental car, but that's nonsense. The film takes place near Washington in an area with more soldiers than civilians, which people love joking about, that this is the safest place on earth until you drop The Rock and Johnny Knoxville into it. Just like the previous movie, it flopped at the box office, putting The Rock's already 15 million paychecks in danger. From that point on, he got a lot more careful with his choices. He even started taking supporting roles, like in Be Cool, just to stay visible and reset his momentum. And that movie is important for one more reason. It was the last time he appeared in the credits as The Rock. Be Cool couldn't recapture the magic of Get Shorty. Turns out not many people cared about an older Chilly Palmer. Still, it was a smart move, following the path of guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis and trying comedy. The Doom story is way more interesting. We now know the movie completely tanked, and honestly, The Rock probably saw it coming. Maybe he knew one more sunk blockbuster and he'd be starring next to a Belgian ballet legend. Or maybe he was trying the same move that once saved his wrestling career. Either way, he turned down Doomguy and chose to play a ballsy anti-hero instead. That's when poor, naive Karl Urban happily picked up the Doomguy role. His inner geek just couldn't resist the offer. After terrible test screenings, the studio didn't bother with reshoots. They just took a chainsaw and cut about 30 minutes out. Later, 10 minutes of that footage got added back in a director's cut for home release. Damage control, basically. And it didn't help much. In theaters, Doom pulled in $60 million on practically the same budget. And that's how Dwayne Johnson earned his first nomination for the Golden Raspberry Award. At that point, things were already going downhill fast. On the horizon, you could see movies from a very suspicious tier, the kind careers don't come back from. So Dwayne Johnson made a hard pivot. Later, he'd say it wasn't even his idea. It was advice from his managers. The same managers who, he later admitted, almost wrecked his career with that move. First, The Rock crashed and burned with a bunch of other stars in Southland Tales. It was directed by that guy behind Donnie Darko, so everyone thought they were working with the next big genius. Funny thing, Donnie Darko flopped too, but critics loved it. Southland Tales? That one failed spectacularly and earned just $1 million on a budget of $17. Then came Gridiron Gang, which opened at number one and still somehow flopped. What's wild is the role was first offered to Nicolas Cage, Bruce Willis, and even Sylvester Stallone. They all passed. Nobody wanted to cosplay Coach Carter. So the role landed on Dwayne Johnson. And although the movie didn't become a hit, Dwayne was moving in the right direction. In 2007, he finally caught an unexpected win with Disney's The Game Plan. Here, The Rock mixed comedy with his real-life football vibe and it worked. The movie made $148 million on a $22 million budget. Huge win. After that, through the late 2000s, he just farmed his comedy persona. In Get Smart, he was in charge of the stapler. In Tooth Fairy, he handled the dresses. In Race to Witch Mountain, it was straight-up memes. Problem is, each movie reviewed worse than the last and the box office kept sliding downhill. One of the most painful hits for him was Race to Witch Mountain. Depending on who you ask, the budget was anywhere from $50 to $70 million and it only made $106 million, which sounds okay until you realize the movie was a complete production nightmare. The script kept getting rewritten, shoots were delayed, then delayed again, and a bunch of scenes were straight-up reshot. Nobody knows how much it really cost, except the studio, and they're not talking. What we do know is that a sequel was planned and then quietly canceled. That pretty much tells you everything. If the budget was closer to $70 million, the math didn't work, and honestly, even at $50 million, nobody would be lining up to gamble on part two. And next year, while filming Tooth Fairy, The Rock realized his team was steering him straight into a wall. That's when Rock dismissed his team. His cameo in The Other Guys was basically the last echo of them. The first real movie of the new Rock era was Faster, and it flopped too. And no, it has nothing to do with Fast and Furious. Either Dwayne thought it did, or this was a galaxy brain move to draw Vin Diesel's attention. Either way, starting in 2011, The Rock's career did a full 180. What followed was a whole decade of box office wins. And just like at the start of his wrestling run, the thing that saved him again was the family. Before Fast Five, Vin Diesel's franchise was kind of stalling, probably a bald head shortage on screen. Dwayne fixed that problem so effectively, Vin would use that exact same trick again later. Fast Five absolutely crushed it. It pulled in more than half a billion, which is double what the previous movie made, on basically the same $125 million budget. There's also a legend about how this even happened. Supposedly, Vin Diesel got the idea to bring in Dwayne Johnson after reading a post on Reddit where some fangirl said it'd be sick to see Vin and The Rock go full WWE Smackdown on each other. I guess we all know who this girl was. Maybe Vin Diesel will read the comments under this video too. So drop your ideas for the next bald Smackdown in the comments. The wackier, the better. Say my name. The next year gave us Journey 2, where Dwayne straight up replaced Brendan Fraser. By then, Fraser's career was already cracked. The first journey to the center of the earth still did well though, and was basically his last lifeline during a rough stretch. But between him being maybe too loyal and some very sketchy people quietly working against him, things didn't work out. So Dwayne stepped in, and this time successfully. Journey 2 actually did better than the first movie. A third one was planned. But because of Dwayne's packed schedule and a messy script, the studio eventually gave up. In 2013, Dwayne was everywhere. First up, the very important people cooking G.I. Joe sequel saw Warner Brothers winning with Journey 2 by swapping in Dwayne Johnson as the new action guy and thought, yeah, let's do that too. The problem was they did it to Channing Tatum. By the time test audiences saw the film, Tatum had blown up and people were like, wait, where's Channing? Enter reshoots and budget inflation. They filmed a few scenes with him in The Rock to lure more viewers to theaters. The movie still made decent money, but once you factor in Hasbro taking their big toy money cut, the wind suddenly looked kind of mid. And that's when the suits demanded another soft reboot to flop this time properly. Fast and Furious 6 did even better than the one before. At this point, the train had no brakes. Then there was Snitch, where Rock thought he got a producer's chair. Truth is they slapped producer credit on him just to avoid paying his usual $10 million fee. Smart move considering the budget was only 15. So he took a smaller upfront check plus percentage from the box office. Same deal as pain and gain with Michael Bay. The Rock actually likes percentage deals, just not this time. There wasn't much to percentage from. He closed out 2013 with Empire State, which was a real anomaly, $11 million budget, discount Chris Hemsworth and straight to video release. Made by Emmett Furla Films, famous for mass producing late era Bruce Willis straight to video action flicks. When you're getting paid $10 million per movie everywhere else, this looks less like a role choice and more like paying off a favor to some mafia boss or I don't know. Let's see if smart asses in the comments can crack this enigma. In 2014, The Rock dropped Hercules. And honestly, this might be the only Rock movie that decade that didn't fully live up to expectations. But compared to The Legend of Hercules, another Hercules movie that came out that same year, this was an absolute win. It was based on Hercules comics and you can tell Paramount Pictures was way more inspired by 300 than the old TV show with Kevin Sorbo. The movie had a decent 100 million production budget and made 250 million at the box office. But considering the entire food chain, marketing, distribution, cinemas, the studio barely made some money. People usually blame the last minute director swap. Originally, it was supposed to be directed by Peter Berg, the same guy who did The Rundown with Dwayne. But in 2012, Berg's battleship sank spectacularly. After that, he decided to play it safe and focus on a smaller, more serious project, Lone Survivor. So Dwayne got handed Brett Ratner, the guy behind the Rush Hour movies. Ratner rewrote the script to fit his style and you can see the result on screen. The real nuclear level success hit in 2015. The Family Franchise box office suddenly jumped to $1.5 billion. No mystery here. That same year, Dwayne Johnson also fought something even scarier than street racers, which is earthquakes in San Andreas. Audiences dropped half a billion dollars just to watch The Rock save Alexandra Daddario. After San Andreas, Dwayne Johnson cashed his first $25 million paycheck, big milestone. Right after that, he signed on to a small TV show called Ballers, supposedly just wanted to relive his football days a bit. Thanks to the show, we all learned that Denzel Washington has a very talented son. It was Dwayne who cast him in his series, saw how talented he was, and couldn't resist. Of course. The show ran for five seasons, pulled strong ratings the whole time, and quietly became another win on his record. In 2016, he scored two more big wins. First, voice work in Moana. Instant classic, zero risk, Disney money printer. The second was Central Intelligence, which pulled $215 million on a $50 million budget. Here's the trick, though. Dwayne Johnson loves back-end deals. He's a percentage guy. So if you see one of his movies with a budget under $100 million, that usually means he skipped the standard $25 to $40 million paycheck. Instead, he worked basically for food and took all the box office earnings later. In 2017, The Rock technically had three wins, though one of them barely made snack money. Yeah, we're talking Baywatch. The movie was based on the TV show Baywatch, which ran forever. Dwayne Johnson has said he loved the show growing up, so he jumped at the role immediately. He also claimed they knew critics would hate the movie, just like they hated the original show, and that they were making it for the fans, not reviewers. And that's why Baywatch walked away with four nominations for the Golden Raspberry Award. The movie also got an R rating, mostly because of nonstop swearing. A lot of analysts called that decision dumb as hell, killing movie's box office potential because of the adult rating. End result, $179 million box office on a $69 million budget. Not great, not terrible, but that got instantly patched by The Fate of the Furious pulling $1.2 billion and Jumanji doing almost a billion on a $110 million budget. Here's the twist, though. Around this point, Dwayne was dealing with long-term depression. He's been open about it. First, football ended, depression. Then the divorce in 2008, depression again. That was right around his career slump when he fired his old managers and joined a new family. And in 2017, yep, depression again. According to Dwayne, what pulled him through wasn't some Hollywood miracle. It was friends, good people around him, actual support, and maybe, just maybe, Universal Studios granting him a spinoff of the Fast and Furious franchise. So his advice is simple. Have a lot of money, have a successful career, have people who can pat you on the shoulder when things get dark. That's solid advice. Follow it if you can. 2018 kicked off with Rampage and Skyscraper. Skyscraper pulled $305 million on a $125 million budget. Rampage did even better, more than $429 million on $140 million. A sequel got announced immediately. And then reality hit. Dwayne Johnson's schedule was booked years ahead. And 2019 brought three more wins. First, of course, is Hobbs and Shaw, his already mentioned Fast and Furious spinoff that made $760 million on $200 million budget. Then, Jumanji came back and grabbed $800 million on $132 million, still printing money. And finally, he popped up in the smaller, actually good wrestling movie, Fighting With My Family. The budget was $11 million, and the box office brought 42. So, let's zoom out. From 2011 to 2019, Dwayne appeared in 19 movies. One of them was that weird Emmett Furla flick, where he randomly popped up instead of Bruce Willis. Two others, Baywatch and Hercules, made roughly two donuts in profit. That leaves 16 box office hits. Yeah, four of those were numbered Fast and Furious movies, which probably would have survived without him. But the other 12 were pulled off on his own. If you look back historically, finding an actor with that kind of raw box office pull over nine straight years is borderline impossible. He was basically alone at the top, maybe alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, as someone who could guarantee a crowd. And even then, let's be real, even Leo wouldn't probably be able to pull the same numbers in something like San Andreas or Rampage. But everything ends eventually. And with COVID, the Rock's hot streak ended too. In mid-2021, Jungle Cruise came out. And yeah, it flopped, pulling $200 million on pretty much the same budget. Ouch. Now, to be fair, this was peak COVID chaos. Government had just spent a year telling everyone cinemas were basically resident evil. Maybe without COVID, the movie could earn something. Maybe. That same year though, he dropped his first real Netflix blockbuster. According to Netflix, it absolutely demolished records and became their most watched movie ever until K-pop Demon Hunters came out. In 2022, Black Adam finally hit theaters. And yeah, Dwayne Johnson straight up refused to debut in Shazam. DC originally wanted to introduce him there, but Dwayne had other plans. Instead, he pushed for a solo movie, rewritten around him. That's why this thing took forever. He signed with DC Studios back in 2014. Shazam dropped in 2019. Black Adam didn't show up until 2022. The movie also went through massive reshoots. And somehow, Dwayne turned that into content. Constant updates, behind the scenes clips, hype posts about insanely epic scenes. Which kind of makes you wonder, what exactly did they shoot the first time? If all the epic stuff came later. Black Adam pulled $393 million on a $260 million production budget. Add the reported $100 million spent on marketing to that, and it's clear that it was a complete flop. But things got even messier. The story goes that Dwayne Johnson more or less used Henry Cavill while trying to prop up the DC universe. When DC signed Dwayne back in 2014, they thought they were just hiring an actor. What they didn't realize was that the package also came with relentless enthusiasm, bordering on main character syndrome. After The Rock personally pushed for Cavill's cameo in the post-credits scene, it looked like things were moving toward a big showdown. And then new management walked in, slammed the brakes, and basically said that they don't need another Batman versus Superman. That wasn't nice for the public image, but things were about to get even worse. In 2024, his new streaming project, Red One, was dropped. This time with Amazon, and that's where the bad rumors really started leaking out. A lot of noise came from its shoots and reshoots. Stuff about handlers whose whole job was apparently to bring in plastic bottles. But people weren't even mad about that. They were mad about everything else. According to multiple reports, Dwayne Johnson started showing up late every day. Sometimes six hours late, sometimes not at all. That behavior supposedly ballooned the budget into nonsense territory. Numbers like $250 million, or according to some sources, even 270. Critics weren't thrilled and reviews leaned mostly negative. Released in theaters, the movie couldn't even cover the production costs. But here's one thing. Once Red One hit Amazon Prime Video, something weird happened. It blew up on streaming, drawing over 50 million views in its first four days, and topping viewing charts in almost 20 countries. But all of that was streaming math. And as everyone knows, that doesn't really count. So after realizing the old formula was starting to fail, Dwayne Johnson decided it was time to remind everyone how talented he is. Enter The Smashing Machine, a small, grim, awards-coded project. A lot of people said The Rock was unrecognizable in it, and critics were surprisingly kind. This wasn't about money anyway. The film cost around $40 million and only made about 20. Dwayne got a nod from the Golden Globes, but the Academy didn't take his redemption arc seriously without Darren Aronofsky running around. So they only nominated the makeup artists. Ouch. Maybe it triggered another round of depression. Or maybe Dwayne Johnson just locked in for real and decided to impress everyone by playing with his weight, like you-know-who. Either way, his schedule right now is stacked for the next 10 years. More Fast and Furious, more Moana, more Jumanji and Red Notice getting two sequels. Yeah, you heard that right. Those Red Notice follow-ups are being shot back-to-back because lining up the schedules of Dwayne and Ryan Reynolds twice is borderline impossible. Supposedly, the script is already finished and somehow better than the first one, which leads to the real plot twist here. Turns out Red Notice actually had a script. So yeah, even if Dwayne Johnson's career has started to slow down a bit, he's still stacked with a huge backlog of projects that need sequels, prequels, or other DLCs. That said, his era as Hollywood's franchise savior and universal swap guy, that chapter feels done. Kind of like how looking like a young Greek god eventually became a finished chapter for Henry Cavill. 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