Why did "Walking Tall" fall flat? Why did "The
Rundown" get the runaround? And how did Dwayne Johnson save not just his career,
but the entire "Fast & Furious" franchise? Keep watching to find out!
You couldn't ask for a more high-profile movie star debut than when Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
snagged the villain role in mega-sequel "The Mummy Returns." Despite only being
in a a small part of the movie, Johnson was a huge part of "The Mummy Returns'" marketing,
leading to a $68 million opening and a $435 global haul.
Johnson snagged $5.5 million for the prequel "The Scorpion King," beer and pizza money to him today,
but at the time the highest-salary ever for a first-time leading man.
Johnson proved he was worth the investment, with the movie bringing
in $165 million worldwide. Then, "The Rundown" happened. Whoops!
Honestly, "The Rundown" is a really solid action movie, with a 69% critics score on
Rotten Tomatoes. However, by 2003 "one man army" action movies were being replaced by superheroes.
The movie managed to pull in $80 million worldwide, but with an $85 million price tag, the
underperformance of "The Rundown" nearly sent The Rock scrambling right back to the wrestling ring.
"Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw" may have caused a rift with
"the family," but it did pretty well for Johnson's bank account,
and for Universal Pictures which bankrolled it. This spin-off from "The Fast & Furious"
franchise was one of the few bright spots of the dismal summer box office of 2019.
While it certainly helps being part of a "Fast & Furious" franchise that has racked up
$6.5 billion worldwide, Johnson's global popularity played a huge part in the
success of "Hobbs & Shaw." All due respect to Tyrese Gibson and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges,
but it seems unlikely a "Pearch & Parker" film would do nearly as well.
So, how well did "Hobbs & Shaw" do? With a mammoth $200 million budget,
$20 million of which reportedly went to Johnson's wallet,
"Hobbs & Shaw" made $173 million domestically and $760 million worldwide.
2005 was a time of transition for Johnson. The lukewarm box office response to action
pics like "The Rundown" stalled his efforts at becoming the next Arnold Schwarzenegger.
However, he hadn't yet launched his dreadful "macho guy in a kid's movie" phase exemplified
by films like "Race To Witch Mountain." In this muck was the appropriately titled "Doom."
Appropriately titled because that's exactly what this movie met critically and commercially:
Doom. With an 18% critics score and 34%
audience score, the video game adaptation failed to transition from the console to the big screen.
With a $70 million budget, "Doom" finished its run earning $28 million domestically and $58 million
worldwide. Add in marketing costs, and it's estimated the film likely lost around $82 million.
Johnson was only a co-lead opposite Karl Urban, but his name and face were plastered all over
the promotional materials, so whether he was in it for a few minutes or the whole runtime,
people who went to see it did so because of him - so the failure was considered his.
"I'm not supposed to die!"
Dwayne Johnson's second appearance as Special Agent Luke Hobbs is one of the biggest hits on
his resume. This was "Fast and Furious 6," by the way, and if you have trouble remembering
which "Furious" movie that was, it was the one where Hobbs hires Dominic and the family to take
out a mercenary - whose second in command is Letty - in exchange for a full pardon.
Not the the plot matters. "Fast and Furious 6" earned a whopping $238
million domestically and $789 million worldwide. On a $160 million budget,
it is estimated to have made a profit around $469 million.
You could be forgiven for thinking: "So what? Johnson just latched onto a popular franchise."
Actually, it was kinda the other way around. Johnson's first "Furious" movie, "Fast Five,"
was already a huge 44% improvement over the "Fast & Furious'" take of $359 million. Johnson
helped the "Furious" franchise level up in a big way, leading to his nickname "Franchise Viagra."
Dwayne Johnson may have starred in "Walking Tall," but he certainly wasn't walking very
tall at the box office. "The Rundown" had disappointed with $80 million worldwide,
so Johnson was looking for a rebound.
And he did not get it. "Walking Tall" wasn't a course correction, so much as an even bigger
detour than "The Rundown." "Walking Tall" got a dreadful 26% critics' score and a barely fresh
60% audience score. Its box office was even worse, earning just $47 million worldwide.
Johnson's series of bombs showed while audiences were all in on him being an "added value" to
the already popular "Mummy" series, they didn't see him as a movie star ... yet.
He was still "the wrestler who acted," as evidenced by his continued billing as The
Rock. But if he was going to "walk tall" for real, a change was clearly in order.
"That was a hell of a homecoming party."
The "Fast and Furious" and "Jumanji" franchises are similarly unusual,
because they started as successful, but not spectacular, box office performers,
only to become major franchises later. So what's the common denominator? Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson's impact on "Jumanji" might be more impressive than "Fast and
Furious," as "Jumanji" wasn't even a franchise before Johnson;
it was a well-remembered Robin Williams star vehicle from 22 years earlier.
Johnson turned it into a franchise with 2017's "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle."
Sony wisely played it safe, only spending $90 million on the film,
and making sure "Jumanji" was front and center in the film's marketing.
That, and plastering the stars' mugs all over the marketing, most notably that of Johnson.
It turned out to be a good strategy. "Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle" opened relatively small
to just $36 million, but it legged it out to an incredible $404 million domestically
and $961 million worldwide, for an estimated $781 million profit. Yup, somehow, someway,
the "Jumanji" series went from a has-been to a nearly $1 billion franchise. This makes it
not only one of Johnson's biggest hits, but the biggest franchise transformation ever.
By 2006, Dwayne Johnson's movie star career was off to a "rocky" start.
Actually, it was straight-up terrible.
"The Rundown," "Walking Tall," and "Doom," had each bombed,
demonstrating moviegoers weren't looking for the "next" Schwarzenegger, and even if they were,
it wasn't Johnson. So what's a would-be macho, one-man-army movie star supposed to do?
Give the audience the feels. Enter 2006's "Gridiron Gang," a "based on a true story" drama
in which Johnson plays a probation officer and counselor at a juvenile
detention center who teaches the inmates responsibility by forming a football team.
If it feels like you've seen this movie before, critics agreed,
panning it as cliche with a 42% score. And audiences stayed away. "Gridiron Gang" earned
$41 million worldwide. Even with a modest $30 million budget, it lost about $19 million.
The only silver lining is that it allowed Johnson to demonstrate
actual acting ability, which might have helped him get another chance.
The original 1995 "Jumanji" was a solid hit for Robin Williams. But when the
studio tried to turn it into a franchise a decade later with 2005's "Zathura,"
they made the mistake of not bringing back Williams. As a result, the movie was a flop.
So after the success of 2017's "Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, the studio had learned its lesson,
bringing back Johnson and his co-stars to recapture the magic.
It worked: 2019's "Jumanji: The Next Level" was another smash hit,
earning $316 million domestically and $800 million worldwide.
"Awright! Bring it on!"
Thanks to its modest $125 million budget, it's estimated that "Jumanji:
The Next Level" earned around $550 million. That's some serious bank.
Dwayne Johnson's movie career was in a weird place in 2010.
He'd headlined several action movie bombs, but found his new niche starring in "badass
in a kid's movie" films like "The Game Plan" and "Tooth Fairy." Alas, those brought to mind
Hulk Hogan's failed big screen career, such as the dreadful "Mr. Nanny". Sure,
they made a little money, but is that really the direction anyone would want to take their career?
Certainly not Johnson, who tried again to headline an action flick in 2010's "Faster."
With a very modest $24 million budget, "Faster" seemed sure to make money,
if only because it was so cheap to produce. Yeah, so much for that.
"Faster" tanked out of the gate and ran out of gas fast, earning $23 million domestically and
$35 million worldwide. Despite its bargain budget, "Faster" still reportedly lost about $13 million.
Back to kiddie movie hell for Johnson? Not quite. He followed this up with 2011's "Fast Five,"
which more than doubled the worldwide gross of "Faster" in its opening weekend alone. Johnson's
action movie career didn't need to go "Faster;" it just needed to go Faster and Furious-er.
Few franchises have followed a more interesting trajectory than "The Fast and The Furious."
The series started strong in 2001, hit the skids, then roared back not only bigger than before,
but much bigger. And much of that can be chalked up to the addition of Johnson,
who changed the franchise forever with 2011's "Fast Five."
But that wasn't the biggest hit in the franchise.
The series' high water mark came with 2015's "Furious 7."
You could tell this film was meant for big things when it opened to $147 million domestically,
a $50 million bump from the $97 million opening of "Fast and Furious 6." "Furious 7" wasn't
done smashing franchise records, earning $353 million domestically on its way to an incredible
$1.5 billion worldwide, nearly doubling the $789 million worldwide gross of "Fast and Furious 6."
"Furious 7" became one of the top ten highest-grossing films ever. With a $190 million
budget, "Furious 7" earned Universal a profit of around $1.12 billion. "Furious 7" is unequivocally
Johnson's biggest hit, handily topping the $781 million profit of "Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle"
and $1.2 billion gross of "Fate of the Furious." Not bad for a pro wrestler turned actor, right?
There are bombs, there are mega bombs, and then there's "Southland Tales." It's appropriate the
film is about a potential nuclear annihilation, as that pretty much was the scale of this disaster.
Strangely, "Southland Tales" seemed like it might be just what Johnson's
career needed in 2007 following a string of failures. Most of Johnson's mid-2000s
oeuvre was straight-to-DVD quality, so starring in critical darling Richard
Kelly's highly-anticipated follow-up to "Donnie Darko" was probably meant to give him indie cred.
So much for that.
While "Southland Tales" has recently received something of a critical reappraisal,
at the time few viewers liked it, as its 39% critics score and 41% audience score demonstrated.
Even worse was its box office gross. Ready for this? "Southland Tales" made $364,607
worldwide. Yep, probably less than what a Luke Hobbs' movie makes on a Tuesday afternoon.
For "The Fast and The Furious" franchise's eighth installment,
the series did what nobody could have possibly predicted — it broke up the
family! And Vin Diesel's Dominic "Dom" Toretto was the one to do it! Say what?!
Honestly, by this point the franchise could have done just about anything and still would have made
boatloads of money. But just for the sake of thoroughness, here's the deets:
after Dom fell into the seductive clutches of Charlize Theron's diabolical Cipher, there was
only one man who could bring the family together to take on their former leader — Dwayne Johnson.
By this point Johnson was almost as much a part of this franchise as Diesel, as despite the large
ensemble they were the only two featured on the teaser poster, with the provocative "Family No
More" tagline. That was enough. "The Fate of the Furious" opened to $98 million, and wound
up bringing home $225 million domestically and $1.2 billion worldwide. With a blockbuster-sized
$250 million budget, "The Fate of the Furious" still hauled in about $700 million in profit.
At this point it seems fair to say that Johnson has probably left the bombs behind for good.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Looper videos about your favorite stars are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.