Could John Cena be joining the Fast & Furious franchise? The WWE wrestler says it would be a “dream” to go from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson‘s rival to his Fast & Furious co-star.
“That stuff is beyond my control, but I would absolutely love that opportunity,” Cena told Entertainment Weekly this week. “That, for me, would be a dream. I’m never really like, ‘Oh, I’d like to work with this person,’ but I just think between our chemistry in the live performance setting, there’s something certainly there with The Rock. So that would be my one name on the wish list.”
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As two of the highest-profile wrestlers who have been able to make the transition from WWE to acting, Cena and Johnson faced off in 2012 and 2013 as the headlining match at Wrestlemania — but the animosity wasn’t all scripted.
Cena angered Johnson with comments suggesting Johnson had turned his back on the WWE, which Cena now admits was “stupid” of him to say.
Cena recently praised Johnson during an interview with The Wrap last week, saying that Johnson is in an entirely different class from him when it comes to being a movie star.
“The Rock is in a conversation by himself. He is an anomaly, he’s done unbelievable things in the world of sports and entertainment,” Cena said. “There is only one man even involved in that conversation and it is him, he sets the bar rather high.”
“It’s guys like that who not only work hard but use their platform,” Cena said. “He is unbelievably gifted at using social media to spread the fact that hard work is how you achieve success,” Cena marveled over his counterpart. “Hard work is also how you achieve significance. He inspires a lot of people, I don’t think he understands the depth of how much. He is someone I look up to — so if I look up to him, there’s no way we can be in the same conversation.
While there have been no official moves to integrate Cena into Fast & Furious or Johnson’s upcoming spin-off, Cena has already landed another mega-franchise involving cars and high speeds: Bumblebee, the Transformers spin-off set 20 years before the events of the first film.
“It’s going to be a wonderful piece of this franchise that I think people are going to enjoy,” Cena said. “I was very intrigued being able to meet the team around the movie. [Director] Travis [Knight] is such a passionate man. The role they were talking to me about doing was very intriguing to me because it’s a road I’ve never been down before, but a road I felt like I could accomplish. And then put that together with the context of the movie, the way that the consumer will now view Bumblebee, all of that stuff was very interesting to me. And then they were stupid enough to say yes.”
Cena previously appeared in a string of comedic roles but is now back in the action-movie fold, which could put him in a good position to possibly appear in Furious.
