“It’s up to us to restore the Baywatch brand!”
If you’ve seen the latest trailer for Paramount and Seth Gordon’s sun-kissed reboot, you’ll no doubt remember the moment in which Mitch Buchannon’s (Dwayne Johnson) superior outlines a mission to course-correct his company’s public image – a strategy that involves recruiting cocksure lifeguard Matt Brody (Zac Efron) – but it’s that tongue-in-cheek line that really applies to the package as a whole.
In order to modernize Baywatch for a 2017 audience, the Powers That Be have ditched the fist-pumping power ballads and cheesy drama in favor of a balls-to-the-wall action movie that takes more than a few cues from Sony’s wildly popular Jump Street series. From a soundtrack featuring Notorious B.I.G. to the film’s R rating, the Baywatch of 2017 is a far cry from the original TV series, and that’s a change in tact Dwayne Johnson acknowledged during a recent interview with The Sun (via Screen Rant). When asked about the tone specifically, The Fate of the Furious star stressed that next month’s gleefully over-the-top actioner is “far dirtier than the show ever was.” Buckle up, folks, things are about to get raunchy.
We are far dirtier than the show ever was – obviously the show was a family show on at family time of day – but in the movie we could have been dirtier. I think people are going to be shocked that Baywatch has got dirty – but there are a lot of laughs … We worked hard to make sure the flesh quota was high, there’s more gratuitous boobs, bums, abs, whatever per minute than you can imagine. Plot was important, don’t get me wrong, but so was sorting out our slow motion runs.
With Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson taking point, Baywatch will also bring together the likes of Alexandra Daddario (Summer), Kelly Rohrbach (C.J.), Ilfenesh Hadera (Stephanie Holden) and Jon Bass (Ronnie) as they wage war on Priyanka Chopra’s big bad, Victoria Leeds. Her arrival on the bay has caused all sorts of trouble – dead bodies, drugs…the whole nine yards – and it’s up to our impossibly attractive heroes to put an end to the madness.
Paramount’s cadre of lifeguards will trot off the beach and into theaters when Baywatch arrives on May 26th. Having retreated from Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, Seth Gordon’s budding franchise revival will now go up against Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and only time will tell which maritime adventure will reign supreme at the international box office.
