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Credit: ABC (left), Disney (right)Actor Dwayne Johnson sent shockwaves around Hollywood with his latest development, a direct challenge to Disney.
Dwayne Douglas Johnson has had a friendly relationship with Disney for many years. Just as the former WWE champion moved into a major Hollywood role following a successful stint as the Scorpion King in the Mummy franchise alongside Brendan Fraser, he starred in a couple of family-friendly movies from Disney, which included The Game Plan (2007) and Race to Witch Mountain (2009).
After The Game Plan, Dwayne Johnson left Disney for more than a half-decade to pursue opportunities in many action blockbusters, including the Fast & Furious franchise, before returning to the company to play the voice of Maui in Moana (2016) and Skipper Frank Wolff in Disney’s Jungle Cruise (2021). Recently, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Dwayne Johnson announced that they once again would be joining forces for a live-action Moana film in which Johnson would reprise his role as Maui and serve as an Executive Producer on the project.
However, a recent move from Dwayne Johnson challenging Disney has sent a major shock through Hollywood.
Disney CEO Bob Iger has been outspoken about the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which have writers and actors across Hollywood protesting against big studios, including Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, and others. While there have been some negotiations, no agreement has been reached.
Iger has called for these protests to come to an end, calling it “disturbing,” and has received quite the amount of backlash for his comments.
“It’s very disturbing to me. We’ve talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges we’re facing, the recovery from COVID which is ongoing, it’s not completely back. This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption,” Iger said. “I understand any labor organization’s desire to work on behalf of its members to get the most compensation and be compensated fairly based on the value that they deliver. We managed, as an industry, to negotiate a very good deal with the directors guild that reflects the value that the directors contribute to this great business. We wanted to do the same thing with the writers, and we’d like to do the same thing with the actors. There’s a level of expectation that they have, that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”
It would seem that Dwayne Johnson has a different opinion on the matter that flies directly in the face of what Iger has called for, as the CEO shared that the goals from the strike are “unrealistic.”
The Rock just made history, donating a 7-figure amount to the SAG-AFTRA foundation relief fund. The check is the largest donation they’ve ever received from an individual and will “help thousands of actors keep food on their table, their kids safe, and their cars running,” according to reports from Variety.
SAG-AFTRA Foundation president Courtney B. Vance called the donation a “call to arms” and said that Johnson shared he “wasn’t going anywhere.”
“It is a call to arms for all of us to know that we just have to step up however you can,” Vance adds. “If your step up is $10, step up. Because that $10 is going to help somebody. If it’s $10,000, if it’s $10 million, step up, because we have to. Everyone knows what happens when you go on strike, when you stand for something — as the saying goes, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for everything — you can’t stand unless you have support underneath you, on the side, up top and up front. So Dwayne is letting everyone know, ‘I’m here. What are you going to do?’”
While The Rock is openly denouncing Disney in this particular matter, as well as other major studios, he still has plans for future projects and fans should expect that these will start up again when the strikes end. He is advocating for fellow actors and attempting to make a difference by giving a major amount of money to help relieve them as the strikes continue.
Johnson is scheduled to begin production on Disney’s live-action Moana film in October, but there could be potential delays and postponements.