It’s The Rock as you’ve never seen him before: Looking like someone else. In the first trailer for A24’s The Smashing Machine, written and directed by Benny Safdie, Dwayne Johnson takes on the role of MMA fighter Mark Kerr, a notable shift into serious drama for the action star/professional wrestler.
The first trailer introduces both Johnson as Kerr as well as Emily Blunt as Kerr’s partner Dawn — a reunion for the two actors after working together on Disney’s The Jungle Cruise (a very different movie from this one). The ups and downs of life as a professional fighter get the spotlight in these scenes, with the ups and downs of Kerr’s career promising both falls from grace as well as comebacks.
Whether The Smashing Machine will connect with awards voters this fall remains to be seen. (Another similarly themed project, Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw, should have gotten Zac Efron an Oscar nomination but failed to do so.) Still, for those curious to see what The Rock is cooking in the prestige drama realm, this first look has a lot of promise.
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The Smashing Machine will be released in theaters on October 3rd, 2025. Check out the new trailer below, and for more, revisit Benny Safdie’s last big project — the Showtime series The Curse.
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