The very notion of Dwayne Johnson rebooting The Scorpion King reeks of creative bankruptcy, and nothing will sum up Hollywood’s reliance on established properties at the expense of any sort of originality better than the fact the upcoming movie is going to be a reboot of the spinoff from a sequel to a remake.
You might not even be aware that The Scorpion King franchise has been alive and well for over a decade on the straight-to-video market, spawning four sequels. Rise of a Warrior, Battle for Redemption, Quest for Power and Book of Souls were every bit as generic as their titles would suggest, and featured a revolving door of randomly assorted talent including Randy Couture, Dave Bautista, Ron Perlman, Billy Zane, Michael Biehn, Rutger Hauer and Lou Ferrigno.
Of course, Universal will be ignoring all of those now that The Rock has circled back to the very first leading role of his illustrious career. Johnson’s Seven Bucks Productions are developing the reboot, and the smart money would be on the 48 year-old A-lister dropping by for either a cameo appearance or a flashback that would allow him to throw on the wig of Mathayus one more time.
No details are available yet on the project other than the fact that the new Scorpion King will be set in the present day, but we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us the Fast & Furious franchise would be heading to outer space long before it was made official – that the studio are already crossing their fingers in the hopes that the impending relaunch could lead to an entire trilogy. While that might sound like wishful thinking, the strength of Dwayne Johnson’s personal brand should never be underestimated, even if he’s set to take a background role this time around. And should the film perform well enough, we’re told that it’ll definitely receive sequels.
