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Credit: ABCActor Dwayne Johnson has made major waves in the world of Hollywood, particularly with Disney, in the last few weeks.
Inside the Magic has previously covered the comments made by Disney CEO Bob Iger, who 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 these protests “disturbing” and has received massive amounts of backlash for his words.
“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.”
In the face of these comments, Dwayne Johnson joined the fight against the big studios by giving the largest single donation in the history of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation.
SAG-AFTRA Foundation president Courtney B. Vance said the donation served as a “call to arms.”
“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?’”
As Dwayne Johnson openly denounced Disney with this donation, it seems that he might be abandoning Hollywood altogether, at least for the time being.
For those who don’t know, The Rock got his start in the WWF (now WWE) as “the most electrifying man in sports.” However, the WWE champion found himself having success in Hollywood after playing the role of Scorpion King and his movie career began to take off. As a result of his success, he paved the way for the likes of John Cena and Dave Bautista to come from a wrestling background and take over Hollywood.
Now, multiple reports have come forward sharing that Dwayne The Rock Johnson might be going back to his roots.
The actor is reportedly going to make a return to wrestling at WWE SummerSlam– which is this Saturday, August 5– to attack Grayson Waller, who he had a little bit of a feud with on Twitter (now X) earlier this year. There have been numerous rumors that The Rock could return to WWE to wrestle one final match against his cousin Roman Reigns.
If he did, in fact, return at WWE SummerSlam, this would likely set up a program of about seven months in which the company could build to a major match for Dwayne Johnson at WrestleMania XL next April.
“The Rock being in attendance would also be enough to set up a future match between him and Reigns if the two men can interact backstage or even on the ramp together,” Sportskeeda reports. “The Rock could play numerous roles on WWE TV in the future, but at the minute, he clearly needs to make the trip to Detroit to fix his issues with Grayson Waller.”
With things shut down in Hollywood for the foreseeable future, a return to wrestling– which has long been something The Rock has reportedly wanted to do– could make a lot of sense.
It has been more than 1,400 days since Dwayne Johnson made an appearance in the WWE.
What do you think of Dwayne Johnson’s potential next steps? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments!