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- Dwayne Johnson Has Less Than 20 Minutes of Screen Time in ‘Empire State’
- ‘Empire State’ Is Dwayne Johnson’s Most Forgotten Movie
- Johnson Learned a Valuable Lesson with ‘Empire State’
As a film enthusiast who has spent countless hours immersed in the world of cinema, I must say that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s career is nothing short of remarkable. However, his 2013 film, “Empire State,” seems to have slipped through the cracks for many.
Following his initial appearance as The Scorpion King in “The Mummy Returns”, Dwayne Johnson reprised this role for the first time in his leading film debut, the 2002 spin-off titled “The Scorpion King“. This performance earned him a groundbreaking salary of $5.5 million, making it a record for a first-time leading actor. The success of “The Scorpion King” paved the way for Johnson to secure starring roles in action films like “Doom”, “The Rundown”, and “Walking Tall”. Throughout the 2000s, Johnson’s films as a leading man saw varying levels of success. However, he firmly cemented his status as a resilient action star with a promising future towards superstardom.
In the early 2010s, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s earnings per movie reached over $10 million, as he started applying quality control strategies in his acting career. This was further enhanced when his first starring film to earn over $100 million at the domestic box office was the 2012 action-adventure movie “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”. However, unexpectedly, Johnson’s career path took a strange twist when he agreed to star in the poorly received crime drama film “Empire State”, marking his first and only film to be directly released on Blu-ray and DVD.
For Johnson, the sole advantage of the movie “Empire State” was that it was so utterly overlooked upon its debut that even his most ardent supporters scarcely remember it. In the strategic and successful career of Johnson, who is known for his skill in branding and self-promotion, “Empire State” stands out as a puzzling white elephant curiosity – an oddity, a glaring oversight that this actor had not previously made and has since avoided.
Dwayne Johnson Has Less Than 20 Minutes of Screen Time in ‘Empire State’
In the marketing for the movie “Empire State“, Dwayne Johnson is the main focus. However, when “Empire State” was filmed in spring 2012, Dwayne Johnson was already 40 years old and had a supporting role in the film. In this true-story-based movie, Johnson portrays James Ransome, a New York detective investigating a 1982 armored-car depot robbery that stole $11 million, making it the largest cash heist in American history, surpassing the $5.8 million Lufthansa heist depicted in “Goodfellas“.
In the thrilling world of cinema, I found myself making a fleeting cameo in the initial scene of “Empire State.” This film, with its staggering $11 million budget, was a spectacle indeed. However, my screen time was scarce and sporadic throughout the movie, as the narrative primarily revolved around Liam Hemsworth’s character, Chris – a regrettable miscast portrayal of a Greek-American police academy dropout from Queens, New York. Despite his lackluster background as a security guard, Chris and his childhood friend were driven to orchestrate the heist that forms the crux of the storyline.
Apart from Johnson’s age, the Empire State movie seems hastily made and careless, following the pattern typically seen in “Geezer teaser” films. In this formula, veteran actors, though advanced in years, are marketed as the main stars, even though they have limited screen time. Over the past decade, numerous big-name actors like Robert De Niro, John Travolta, and notably Bruce Willis have been associated with these films. Interestingly, it was Bruce Willis who significantly boosted the popularity of this genre, appearing in over 20 such films during the last decade, despite his well-publicized cognitive issues.
In the same vein as Willis, who made $1.5 million for just four days on the 2020 action thriller film “Hard Kill”, Johnson received a substantial income for minimal work hours in “Empire State”. It’s worth noting that any suggestion that “Empire State” was a labor of love for Johnson can be disproven due to the involvement of “Empire State” producer, Randall Emmett, who is renowned for using well-known stars to create buzz around moderately budgeted films. These movies often become profitable through video-on-demand rentals and sales, rather than being a passion project for him.
‘Empire State’ Is Dwayne Johnson’s Most Forgotten Movie
Reflecting on Dwayne Johnson’s illustrious film career that has amassed over $14.6 billion at global box offices, the financial success of “Empire State” is hardly more than a footnote. In comparison, this movie only managed to gross less than $200,000 in its limited theatrical release in Croatia, Mexico, and Thailand in 2013, while it earned over $4 million on Blu-ray and DVD sales that year. Even in the grand scheme of Johnson’s box office dominance, “Empire State” barely registers as a statistical blip. On the other hand, the lowest-grossing film from his repertoire is the 2006 comedy-thriller “Southland Tales”, which took in less than $400,000 at the box office against a hefty production cost of $17 million.
Despite Southland Tales gaining renewed recognition in the last 15 years, Empire State remains largely unknown and overshadowed. In contrast to Southland Tales, which continues to be appreciated more with time, Empire State, currently holding a 24% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, seems to have been overlooked or forgotten almost entirely. In fact, some accounts of Johnson’s career appear to exclude Empire State from their descriptions, as if the film doesn’t exist at all.
Johnson Learned a Valuable Lesson with ‘Empire State’
After the success of Empire State, I solidified my career once more with the 2015 disaster thriller San Andreas. This film, which raked in over $470 million globally, set a new record for any non-IP movie starring me. The massive success of San Andreas, where I pocketed an impressive $25 million, marked a significant stride in my business acumen. Over the past decade, my multifaceted entrepreneurship, from Seven Bucks Productions to a tequila brand, has been as awe-inspiring as my growth as an actor.
Despite a series of professional setbacks in the last ten years, such as the underperformance of Red One, Johnson remains among Hollywood’s top earners. Notably, he persists in honing his acting skills, evidently so in his upcoming role as Mark Kerr in the anticipated biographical sports drama film The Smashing Machine. This performance has sparked discussions about a potential Academy Award nomination for Johnson. Currently, Empire State can be streamed on both The CW and Amazon Freevee.
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2024-12-16 00:31