Dwayne Johnson Totally Changing His Acting Choices And We’re Stoked

As Dwayne Johnson tells it, he and Safdie first discussed the project when Johnson’s production company, Seven Bucks Productions, acquired the rights to Kerr’s story. Safdie was so enthusiastic about working with the Rock on this project that he sent him a sweatshirt Mark Kerr wore in the 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr. Safdie sent a handwritten note along with the shirt expressing the potential he saw in Dwayne Johnson as a serious actor.

Unfortunately, the pandemic put a pin in the two men’s collaboration, and both Safdie and Dwayne Johnson were forced to move on to other projects. Johnson lost touch with Safdi until his Jungle Cruise co-star Emily Blunt reconnected them. Johnson had sent the 2002 documentary to Blunt after telling her it was a project that “really speaks to me” and that the actor really wanted to “sink my teeth into.” After watching the movie, Johnson claims Blunt called him back immediately, insisting he make a movie about Kerr.

“Unbeknownst to me, Christopher Nolan had cast Benny as one of the scientists in Oppenheimer,” Johnson said in a voice memo to Variety. The Rock claims that Blunt spoke to Safdie about him the day after watching the documentary on the set of Oppenheimer. Dwayne Johnson describes Blunt reuniting him with Safdi: “The convergence of kismet and irony.”