The long-awaited trailer has arrived for A24’s The Smashing Machine, a prestige swing for Dwayne Johnson, one of the biggest movie stars in the world known for blockbusters and spectacle rather than (relatively) stripped down indies.
Johnson stars as Mark Kerr, the real-life two-time UFC Heavyweight Tournament Champion who was the subject of the 2002 HBO documentary of the same name that detailed Kerr’s journey and struggles with addiction to pain killers.
Set to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” the trailer shows Johnson sporting prosthetics on his face to help him better resemble Kerr, as well as speaking with an Ohio-area accent rather than his trademark booming voice.
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Benny Safdie wrote and directed the project, which stars frequent Johnson collaborator Emily Blunt as Kerr’s wife. Blunt played matchmaker between Johnson and Safdie, after appearing with him in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
The Smashing Machine is a career pendulum swing for Johnson, who flew to the Cannes Film Festival last year to talk with buyers about the project. While he is still making plenty of franchise projects such as the live-action Moana and maybe even more Fast and Furious movies, he has charted a course in the more dramatic prestige space — such as a Martin Scorsese crime drama he is developing for 20th Century and which counts Leonardo DiCaprio as among the players.
“Winning is the best feeling there is. It’s 40,000 people, and they are cheering you on. There is other high like it in the world,” he says in the trailer. The film arrives Oct. 3.
