How Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ inspired Benny Safdie to work with Dwayne Johnson
The movie business is full of fortuitous coincidences, but it required several to line up at the exact same time in order for Dwayne Johnson to end up collaborating with Benny Safdie on an A24 biopic.
Having done almost nothing but play thinly-veiled extensions of himself in expensive blockbusters for the last decade, Johnson will inhabit Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine, which marks the solo feature-length directorial debut of Safdie as he and brother Josh go their separate ways after a fruitful creative partnership.
If it wasn’t for Christopher Nolan and Oppenheimer, though, the project may have never ended up happening. Despite being the polar opposite of anything ‘The Rock’ has ever appeared in over the course of his big-screen career, the acclaimed biographical drama was just one of many dominoes that fell in the correct order to set The Smashing Machine into motion.
As Johnson explained to Variety, he’d been circling the adaptation of Kerr’s life story since 2019, when his production company purchased the rights. Things ended up being placed on hold due to the pandemic, and he and Safdie ultimately fell out of contact while busying themselves with other commitments.
However, it was a phone call with friend and former co-star Emily Blunt that got the gears turning again. Johnson sent her the original documentary on which the film will be based, telling her that the part was something “that really speaks to me,” and something “I want to sink my teeth into.” After watching it, she told him he had to make it a reality.
In what he called “the convergence of kismet and irony,” Johnson was completely unaware Safdie had been cast in Oppenheimer, in which Blunt also played a major role. She ended up talking to the actor and filmmaker about her recent conversation with the former professional wrestler, which ultimately saw the two reconnecting and bringing The Smashing Machine back from the brink of development hell.
In his own words, Johnson is “at a point in my career where I want to push myself in ways that I’ve not pushed myself in the past,” and a Safdie-helmed A24 production is definitely one way of going about it. He referred to the Uncut Gems co-creator as “the perfect, collaborative, hungry partner for me,” which may have never happened at all were it not for Nolan’s impeccably cast Oppenheimer.
It’s a curious string of developments, but Johnson talking to Blunt about The Smashing Machine and recommending she watch the documentary culminated in the star telling Safdie about her Jungle Cruise cohort’s continued enthusiasm for the project, a perfect storm of happenstance that unfolded right when they were working on the same film at the same time.
