Dwayne Johnson isn’t letting a little box office struggle change his love for The Smashing Machine.
This weekend saw the WWE icon experience his worst box office debut to date, with the biopic about legendary MMA fighter Mark Kerr earning a rough $6 million domestically, according to Comscore. For Johnson, who has fronted blockbusters including Jumanji, Black Adam, Fast X, and Jungle Cruise, this marked a major disappointment. Addressing the low yield on social media, Johnson made it clear that he feels nothing but pride and joy when it comes to his work on the film.
“From deep in my grateful bones, thank you to everyone who has watched The Smashing Machine,” Johnson began his Instagram post. “In our storytelling world, you can’t control box office results — but what I realized you can control is your performance, and your commitment to completely disappear and go elsewhere. And I will always run to that opportunity.”
Cheryl Dunn/A24
Dwayne Johnson in ‘The Smashing Machine’
He went on to celebrate the film’s director, Benny Safdie, noting that it was an “honor to transform in this role” and to work alongside him. “Thank you brother for believing in me,” he added. “Truth is this film has changed my life.”
Indeed, Johnson underwent a drastic physical transformation to take on the role of Kerr. The film chronicles Kerr’s rise and peak, including his struggles with addiction to painkillers, roller coaster relationship with Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt), and the lowest points of his career.
The film was largely acclaimed upon premiering at the Venice Film Festival in September, with Safdie taking home the festival’s Best Director prize. Johnson’s performance has also been widely praised, though not all reviews of the overall film have been favorable.
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When it came to the film’s opening weekend, The Smashing Machine fell flat compared to the weekend’s winner, Taylor Swift‘s The Official Release Party of a Showgirl. The three-day exclusive theatrical engagement raked in $33 million domestically (plus another $13 million from international markets) while second place went to Paul Thomas Anderson’s radical political farce One Battle After Another.
The Smashing Machine took bronze, beating out a re-release of Avatar: The Way of Water, the dog-perspective horror flick Good Boy, and the Indian mythological epic Kantara: Chapter 1.
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