If there’s one thing Robert Zemeckis loves, it’s a movie star. He’s built his career on developing vehicles for the most grandiose names of their respective eras, from Michael J. Fox to Meryl Streep to Tom Hanks to Angelina Jolie to Jim Carrey to Denzel Washington to Brad Pitt. So it was only a matter of time before Zemeckis realized that his next muse ought to be modern Hollywood’s proverbial golden boy, Dwayne Johnson.
Deadline reports that The Rock will team with Zemeckis for The King, a biopic about Kamehameha I (whom Johnson will play), who founded and reigned over the Kingdom of Hawaii at the dawn of the 19th century. The film will be written by Braveheart writer Randall Wallace.
It’s always exciting when a partnership like Zemeckis and Johnson’s—that is, one between two beacons of nerd culture who’ve thus far only occupied different corners thereof—comes to pass. On the one hand, Zemeckis is so associated with geekdom that he had a time-warping cube named after him in this year’s ode to ’80s pop culture, Ready Player One. Meanwhile, The Rock is Hollywood’s go-to headliner for its every other nostalgia-friendly reboot, the latest being a developing Big Trouble in Little China sequel.
Granted, a film about the life and legacy of Kamehameha doesn’t quite seem born of the pair’s shared affinity for this kind of poppy material, and in fact sounds like a bit of a departure for Johnson altogether. Nevertheless, the union of Zemeckis and Johnson is something fans of either will want to look out for. After all, it’ll be just as exciting to see Zemeckis reassess his dramatic side, and The Rock rediscover his.
Are you looking forward to a Zemeckis-Rock team-up? Let us know!
Image: Sony
