Dwayne Johnson Is Rebooting The Scorpion King
Dwayne Johnson is going to return to his roots with a reboot of The Scorpion King.
This article is more than 2 years old
Dwayne Johnson has become one of the biggest movie stars in the entire world. He has continued to find success in big blockbuster fare as a leading man and has also become a powerhouse producer. He has producing credits on many of his upcoming films, including Disney’s Jungle Cruise, the Netflix action film Red Notice, and the DC superhero film Black Adam. And now, it looks like The Rock is going to return to a film that helped make him a megastar in the first place.
Deadline is reporting that Dwayne Johnson is going to produce a reboot of The Scorpion King for Universal. Johnson starred in the original version of The Scorpion King back in 2002, but it looks like he will not be reprising his role for this new take on the property. Instead, he will remain on as one of the key producers and will help guide the reboot with the likely aim of turning it into a tentpole franchise for Universal.
What might surprise you is that The Scorpion King has actually been a continuous franchise since the first film released in 2002. There have been four sequels – none have featured Dwayne Johnson – and the most recent one actually released in 2018! It is quite a testament to the longevity and staying power of the franchise that it has been churning out direct-to-video sequels for so long and seemingly maintaining some kind of success at doing so.
This is probably part of the reason why Dwayne Johnson is interested in getting a reboot of the original film off the ground. The series clearly has an appeal for the mainstream, and it looks like Universal wants to capitalize on that. All of this is made more fascinating by the fact that The Scorpion King was originally a spinoff from The Mummy franchise, which itself was a total revamp of the classic Universal horror movie. The evolution of this series is undeniably wild and intriguing.
Unfortunately, it does not look like Dwayne Johnson will not even be making a cameo in the rebooted version of The Scorpion King. The report from Deadline states that his role will be solely as a producer since his schedule is so packed. It sounds like this new iteration will recast the character of Mathayus and act as a total reboot of the series. It will be interesting to see who gets cast in the role. You can bet that Johnson will have a substantial say in who will be stepping into his shoes.
We also know that Dwayne Johnson plans for this new version to be pretty different from what we expect. Writer Jonathan Herman (Straight Outta Compton) has been tapped to deliver the screenplay, and the Deadline report says this reboot will take place in modern times. That has us pulling at our shirt collars just a bit because it gives us flashbacks to 2017’s The Mummy with Tom Cruise. Hopefully, this new version of The Scorpion King can avoid the pitfalls of that film.
It is a bit of a bummer that Dwayne Johnson won’t be returning to the big screen in this new take on The Scorpion King, but it is important to remember that the original film was his first major big-screen role. It is the movie that launched his entire career as a Hollywood movie star. The idea that he might be able to use this reboot to do the same for a new actor is pretty cool. If this reboot ends up delivering a new generation their version of Dwayne Johnson, that is worth the movie’s budget alone.
Exactly when we can expect this reboot of The Scorpion King is unclear – Dwayne Johnson and his producing partners have only just announced the project and the script has yet to be written – so we might be waiting for some time before this manifests. Still, it is pretty crazy to think that even The Scorpion King is going to get swept up in the reboot culture. And if you are really hurting for more Scorpion King in your life, there are apparently five entire movies you can watch right now to get your fix. Pretty soon, it looks like there will be six.
