The Rock has opened up about why he’s at peace with The Smashing Machine‘s underwhelming box office performance.
The Smashing Machine, featuring The Rock as MMA legend Mark Kerr, received positive reviews but underperformed at the box office. It has grossed $20 million in its first month in theaters against a production budget of $50 million. The People’s Champion addressed the movie’s performance during a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
The Rock claimed that the movie changed his life because it represented a turning point in his career. He stated that he listened to his instincts and made the film to challenge himself, and that he didn’t think about the box office at all.
“Smashing Machine completely changed my life in ways that I didn’t anticipate, because of what it represents. It represents, for me, listening to your gut, to your instinct, to that little voice. Sometimes in life, you think you’re capable of something, but you don’t quite know. And sometimes it takes people around you to go, ‘Come on, you could do this.’
“Smashing Machine also represents a turning point in my career that I’ve wanted for a long time: for the first time in my career — 20 plus years since The Scorpion King came out — I made a film to challenge myself and to really rip myself open and to go elsewhere and disappear and transform. And not one time did I think about box office.
“In our world you’re like, ‘Shit, how are we going to look?’ And then Friday night comes and you’re like, “Oh man.” You wake up Saturday, and sometimes you wake up feeling good, and sometimes you’re like, “Oh my God, didn’t do well.” I had not thought about that at all. And even that Friday night when we opened, I went to sleep peacefully and woke up peacefully because it represented this thing.”
The Rock Also Shared Why The Box Office Performance Didn’t Affect Him
Speaking further, The Rock claimed that he was at peace with the movie’s performance because he was able to do something he loved after starring in big movies throughout his career.
“Even though we didn’t do well [at the box office], or as well as we wanted to, it was okay because it just represented the thing I did for me. Maybe it was because I was an only child, but all the stuff that I had experienced as a kid and as a teenager — eviction, my mom tried to take her life two months after we got evicted and I pulled her out of the middle of the highway, a whole bunch of stuff happened — I had rejected exploring any of that on film.
“For years I would do these other films that were big and fun, Jumanji and Moana, with a happy ending, and I love that still. But what this represented was, ‘Oh wait, I can do the thing I love, which is to tell stories, but I could also take all this stuff and have a place to put it.
“So you ask if I’m going to run towards this? We have a project with Scorsese, a project with Aronofsky. Yes, I’m going to run, put all my shit in that, and continue to challenge myself. Anyway, Smashing Machine, as you see, was an opportunity of a lifetime that did change my life.”
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