Being named as part of an altogether bizarre $3 billion lawsuit doesn’t appear to have affected Dwayne Johnson‘s ability to head out and hype himself up in front of the entire world, with the only figures at the forefront of his mind being box office totals.
Obviously, his last couple of trips to the multiplex haven’t gone too well when DC League of Super-Pets and Black Adam both flopped to leave him cast out of the DCU in record time after he’d spent 15 years developing the Man in Black’s debut for what proved to be absolutely no reason, but you can’t say he hasn’t worked hard to get to this point.
In fact, The Rock faced a lot of pushback early in his career for being too muscular to play a conventional leading man, so he decided to throw it into everyone’s faces by getting even more jacked than he was at the height of his WWE days. Not only that, but he’s taken his destiny into his own hands by founding his own production company that dabbles almost exclusively in projects that he appears in, sticking it to the established Hollywood order in the process.
Reflecting on his journey in a recent interview that he reposted to his Instagram account, Johnson added an accompanying caption that sums up his drive and desire to bend the business to his will, forging out a path that he was told wasn’t possible.
“A funny thing happened though when I finally said, “f*ck this, I’m gotta be me and do it my way – and if I fail then at least I fail being authentic.” The entire industry of Hollywood conformed around me. And then I went to work.”
Of course, the 1980s was packed to the gunnels with musclebound meatheads who controlled their own futures, but in terms of the sheer mass-to-success ratio, we haven’t witnessed an A-list superstar burst onto the scene and take control like Johnson in quite a while.