Why is Dwayne Johnson considered a major star?

Cafe Society
1

Hollywood is at bottom a business. Actors generally don’t get work unless they sell tickets. This is especially true when you making action/adventure movies. These are made for cash not for prestige.

So let’s look at Dwayne Johnson’s career from an accountant’s viewpoint.

Okay, he’s been in several of the Fast & Furious movies and those have been big successes. But that’s a Vin Diesel franchise not a Dwayne Johnson franchise.

Moana was voice work in a Disney movie.

After that, there’s a sharp drop-off. None of Dwayne Johnson’s movies, other than the ones I’ve mentioned above, has broken the two hundred million mark. And nowadays, a movie isn’t considered a real blockbuster until it breaks three hundred million.

Central Intelligence, San Andreas, Pain and Gain, Snitch, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Tooth Fairy, Race to Witch Mountain, The Game Plan, and The Scorpion King were all marginal earners.

Baywatch, Hercules, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Faster, Southland Tales, Gridiron Gang, Doom, Walking Tall, and The Rundown were all a step below that.

The weird thing about this list of movies is that it’s so long. Somehow, studios keep treating Johnson like he’s a A-list star and putting him in the lead of major movies even though he has never had a blockbuster success.

2

Get Smart made $230.7m on an $80m budget, so a pretty good return. Granted, it wasn’t specifically a Rock franchise, but he was one of the major stars of the film.

3

There was a thread on this years ago and the answer as I recall was that he appeared on set on time and sober, took direction well and was willing to do a lot of grunt work promoting the film. Many leading men, well don’t do any of that. He gets work and good work because he is easy to work with.
And don’t underestimate his fame due to wrestling. I find it telling that he really only broke into the A-List as an actor when he made his part time wrestling come back in 2011 and really embraced “The Rock” mantle, before that for about 5-6 years he tried to call himself Dwayne Johnson exclusively, to get away from the shadow of the WWE. Especially outside N America, having The Rock in a film gives it big name recognition which frankly any other mid level American star won’t give it; I like Jeremy Renner, but cinemas attendances, DVD sales and Streaming numbers in Karachi, Kolkata and Kuala Lumper won’t rise because of him being the lead in a film.

4

He’s charismatic, charming, multi-talented, handsome, does comedy and action*, and can open a movie. He also works hard, puts in the hours, regularly in at least two movies per year, has no problem being second or third banana, and people love to work with him.

In terms of financial return, he’s no Schwarzenegger, but in almost every other way he’s Arnie’s equal or better.

*and can sing, it turns out

5

From what I’ve read, this (bolded) was essentially Bill Paxton’s (RIP) formula for success.

6

Just to reiterate the fact how big The Rock is Internationally; San Andreas made over 400 USD overseas. Even Scorpion King did well, making170 million USD in 2002, a damn good amount for a film in 2002, a time when the market in S Asia, the Far East/China and the ME was far less than today.

GI Joe made 375 millionafter International was added.

Here is how much Johnson’s movies have made. CLick on several and see how much the Domestic (which IIRC means N America) and international earnings have been.

Bottom line, the bottom line is far from Rock Bottom.

7

Maybe it’s his signiture aggressive eyebrow lifting.

8

I read somewhere that if he gets billed as “The Rock” in a film, he has to pay somebody or other (can’t remember and am not Googling well today) a percentage whereas if he’s simply “Dwayne Johnson” he doesn’t.

He’s very good in Ballers, I wish to add.

9

It would be the WWE, who hold the trademark on his ring name. They’re mostly concerned with wrestlers taking their ring names to other promotions (and thus giving that promotion the goodwill the wrestler earned at the WWE), but I’d be surprised if they didn’t consider film to be basically the same field, especially now that they have a film production arm.

Some wrestlers own the trademark on their ring names (particularly ones who wrestled under their real names), but DJ’s not one of them.

10

Prudential Insurance?

11

I found a couple of sources that say Johnson purchased the rights to the name “The Rock” from the WWE and now is sole owner of the name.

http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/entertainment/15-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-rock-dwayne-johnson/

12

But what you’re calling the “weird thing” – flip that around for a second.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island did $335m on a $79m budget; Baywatch, $177m on a $69m budget. So, a combined gross of over $500m, on a budget of under $150m; compare that to an A-Lister who does a $500m gross on a $160 budget.

And figure the A-Lister gets another $160m project; and figure he again delivers, with another gross of $500m. And note that Johnson did that GI Joe movie along with The Game Plan: combined budget of $152m, combined gross of $522m.

And figure Hollywood builds another project around the A-Lister, again giving it a budget of $160m; and figure he again brings home a half-a-billion-dollar gross. By contrast, Johnson does San Andreas and Tooth Fairy: combined budget of less than $150m, combined gross of more than $585m.

And figure the A-Lister also does a $150m flick that only triples its budget, for a $450m gross; and factor in that Johnson did Central Intelligence and Hercules for a combined budget of $150m, with a combined gross of well over $460m.

So you can throw less than $600m at Dwayne Johnson’s films and get back more than two billion; or you can throw more than $600m at the real A-Lister’s films, and get back less than that. So, yes, there’s an argument to be made that he’s got a weirdly long list of not-quite-A-List movies; but there’s an argument to be made that it’s kind of like he has a normal-sized list of A-List stuff, not counting Moana.

And then count Moana.

13

Vince McMahon! That’s the name I was trying to remember. Thanks, cochrane.

14

Guess my info was out of date, thanks.

15

All of this.

He seems like a thoroughly decent person, which is rare for a Hollywood star.

He also has a sense of humor. I get a kick out of watching him.

16

I paid nearly that much to see it here! Granted, I bought snacks at the theater.

17

I agree Johnson seems like a great guy. I’ve never heard anyone saying he’s hard to work with. But as I wrote in the OP, ultimately this is a business.

I’ve discussed the business in other threads. It’s not as simple as taking the tickets sales and subtracting the production costs. For a major release, there’s marketing costs. All those press junkets and media campaigns cost a lot of money. For a major release, the marketing costs can be as high as the production costs.

The second big factor is that foreign tickets sales are not equivalent to domestic ticket sales. Money that’s made in other countries has to slowly work its way back to the United States and a lot of the money is lost in the exchanges. A rule of thumb is that for every dollar you earn in foreign ticket sales, you’ll actually see fifty cents.

The third rule of thumb is that a movie is considered a good investment when its box office is twice its total costs; in other words for every dollar you put in, you got two dollars out. Below that figure and you should have invested in a different movie.

Take a movie like San Andreas. Its production cost was reportedly $110,000,000. Now throw on its estimated marketing costs and say $220,000,000 was actually spent on it. Its ticket sales were $155,000,000 domestically and $318,000,000 overseas. But the overseas sales were actually worth $159,000,000. Which means it made the equivalent of $314,000,000. So for every dollar that went into this movie, $1.43 came in. Not a disaster but below average.

18

Look at the numbers before and after Dwayne Johnson joined the cast (Fast Five). The producers knew that a Vin Diesel franchise was a dead end. Now, it is as much Johnson’s as it is Diesel’s.

19

You’re also leaving out all of the Furious movies (Fast & Furious, etc), which really took off when he stepped on board.

The movies he has been in have an Unadjusted Worldwide Box Office of over $8 billion. (Bottom list)

20

Yeh, but that’s a return of 43%. I dare you to find any other investments that make that much.