Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has shared how he reacted to his new movie ‘The Smashing Machine’ flopping at the box office.
Speaking in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, The Rock said that he did not care about ‘The Smashing Machine’ not doing well at the box office, as he was more focused on how he challenged himself to make a movie that is different to his more recent projects. He said:
“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.”
The Smashing Machine had a budget of around $50 million, but has only made an estimated $20 million at the box office since its release on October 3. The Rock said that despite it not doing well on its opening day, he was able to sleep soundly, as he was happy with how the movie turned out. He stated:
“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. And 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.”
Is The Smashing Machine The Rock’s Biggest Box Office Flop?
Despite ‘The Smashing Machine’ opening to just $6 million against a $50 million budget, it is not his biggest box office flop, as that title goes to the 2006 movie ‘Southland Tales’, which The Rock starred in, and it only made $374,743 at the box office despite having a budget of $17 million. His most successful movie to date is ‘Fast & Furious 7’, which, with a budget of $190 million, saw a domestic gross of $353 million and a worldwide gross of $1.51 billion.
