Almost every movie Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson makes could give birth to a sequel, but not all of them get one. That’s because Johnson and his Seven Bucks Productions partner Hiram Garcia are very selective about their projects. Studios have approached them about sequels to Journey 2: Mysterious Island, Rampage, and San Andreas, only to have Johnson and Garcia shoot down the idea.
“We’re very calculating in what [stories] we want to tell, but, look, if our studio partners had their ways, they want a Journey 2: Mysterious Island sequel, they want a San Andreas sequel, they want a Rampage sequel,” Garcia told Collider last week. “It’s like all of those movies, the studio was clamoring for a sequel, but we felt collectively, ‘Look, we told a great version of the story. Now, we want to go to tell another story somewhere else.’”
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If Johnson really did make a sequel to every project that’s a hit, he would never stop working, Garcia pointed out. Johnson is at the point of his movie career where he can be “very selective” about his choices. He decided to move on from the Fast & Furious franchise but decided to stick with Jumanji and he is really excited about his plans for DC Comics movies.
“We have very big plans, obviously, for the DC Universe, if the fans perceive the way we want. We have a lot of stories planned for that,” Garcia told Collider. “But it is a challenge of balancing, ‘Okay, what are the sequels we’re going to do,’ because we’ve been very fortunate that the majority of the projects we’ve done, there’s been a request for sequel, and his availability has always been the thing that made it a challenge.”
One of Johnson’s upcoming projects is Red One, a holiday movie that is heading to Amazon. Jake Kasdan, who helmed Johnson’s two Jumanji movies, is making Red One before they make a third Jumanji movie. Garcia and Johnson are planning to bring the idea for a third one to Sony “shortly,” he said. “That’s a big one for us that we definitely want to be able to come back and tell that third movie,” Garcia said of the Jumanji franchise.
Johnson might be very selective about his sequel decisions, but he still makes more movies than many other stars at his level. In 2021, he starred in Disney’s Jungle Cruise and Netflix’s Red Notice, all while also appearing in NBC’s Young Rock, a sitcom inspired by his life. In 2022, he is the voice of Krypto in DC League of Super-Pets, which opens in May, and plays the title character in Black Adam, which opens on July 29. Johnson has also been developing The King, a biopic about King Kamehameha, who united the Hawaiian islands.
