What should The Rock reboot next?

Dwayne John­son is a rare star in mod­ern Hol­ly­wood, one whose mere appear­ance on screen prac­ti­cal­ly guar­an­tees a hit. He’s also earned a rep­u­ta­tion as some­one who can give the kiss of life to dor­mant stu­dio prop­er­ties, includ­ing Fast and Furi­ous, Jour­ney to the Cen­tre of The Earth, GI Joe and Juman­ji. In short, audi­ences seem only too hap­py to buy into a famil­iar premise so long as John­son is involved, as appears to be the case with his lat­est block­buster vehi­cle, Sky­scraper. With this in mind, we got to think­ing which oth­er films might be fit for a Rock reboot…

He’s already many people’s pick to be a future real-life Pres­i­dent, so why not have John­son audi­tion in a remake of the 1997 action thriller, about ter­ror­ists hijack­ing the Commander-In-Chief’s plane. Per­haps with Jason Statham replac­ing Gary Old­man as the Kaza­kh extrem­ist vil­lain (retain­ing his predecessor’s goa­tee beard). It could even be a sequel of sorts, with Har­ri­son Ford’s for­mer Pres­i­dent aid­ing John­son from the ground.

Despite being huge­ly pop­u­lar in the ​’80s, no one has been able to bring back He-Man and The Mas­ters of The Uni­verse since the unsuc­cess­ful Dolph Lund­gren ver­sion. As one of the few mus­cle­bound action stars left in Hol­ly­wood, John­son could be that man, per­haps paired with his old Fast and Furi­ous direc­tor Justin Lin. As for He-Man’s neme­sis, Skele­tor? A bulked-up Willem Dafoe would be a per­fect fit.

The cult Kurt Rus­sell action-com­e­dy, about a truck dri­ver dragged into a world of ancient mys­ti­cism and tight vests, was rumoured to be in devel­op­ment with John­son as the star. Those plans have stalled, but we think the barmy hit would be a good fit for such a larg­er-than-life actor. We also think orig­i­nal direc­tor John Car­pen­ter should be brought back, after hav­ing to suf­fer through so many poor remakes of his oth­er films.

If the star real­ly want­ed a chal­lenge, he could revive the long-dead spoof genre. John­son has dis­played a knack for com­e­dy, mak­ing him a strong can­di­date to step in the shoes of Robert Hays as Ted Strik­er, a for­mer fight­er pilot and hero of this spoof of ​’70s dis­as­ter movies. John­son could spoof both him­self and his past work, mak­ing him even more like­able to audi­ences (if that’s pos­si­ble), per­haps with Seth Rogen behind the cam­era and Will Fer­rell tak­ing the Leslie Nielsen role.

All good remakes put a lit­tle twist on their pre­de­ces­sors. The 1991 com­e­dy Steve Mar­tin about a father strug­gling to cope with prepa­ra­tions for his daughter’s wed­ding would have a slight­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive with John­son as the father – well, would you want to get on the wrong side of him? Caus­ing chaos in the back­ground as wed­ding plan­ner Franck (for­mer­ly Mar­tin Short) would be Sacha Baron Cohen.

Big is a premise John­son is already some­what famil­iar with, hav­ing played a young­ster trapped in a grown man’s body in Juman­ji: Wel­come to the Jun­gle. The Tom Han­ks ver­sion, which con­cerns a 12-year-old boy who wish­es to be ​“big” and gets what he asks for, would need to be giv­en a twist with John­son in the lead role. Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp would be great as his still-small best friend Bil­ly, and of course the clas­sic walk­ing piano scene would be recre­at­ed shot-for-shot.

While a lot of the films on this list are beloved, John­son wouldn’t have too much trou­ble liv­ing up to this grim crea­ture hor­ror fea­tur­ing wob­bly CGI, a laugh­able script and Jon Voight sport­ing an inde­ci­pher­able accent. Over­haul the script, stick Robert Rodriguez behind the cam­era, and bring in a new ensem­ble to get picked off in the Ama­zon rain­for­est. O’Shea Jack­son Jr could fol­low­ing in his father’s foot­steps, with Dan­ny McBride and Michelle Rodriguez in sup­port­ing roles.

John Cusack played a pup­peteer who dis­cov­ers a door­way into John Malkovich’s mind in Spike Jonze’s sur­re­al mas­ter­piece – but what if that mind belonged to some­one a lit­tle more brawny? Alleged­ly, one film executive’s reac­tion when read­ing the script was, ​‘Why the fuck can’t it be Being Tom Cruise?’ John­son would sat­is­fy that wish and add a dif­fer­ent kind of per­for­mance to his reper­toire, with Michel Gondry tak­ing over from Jonze and Adam Dri­ver pulling the strings in Cusack’s role.

Eric Idle and Rob­bie Coltrane scored a mod­est hit in 1990 in this bud­dy com­e­dy about want­ed crim­i­nals pos­ing as nuns to avoid detec­tion. While cross-dress­ing as a punch­line is clear­ly prob­lem­at­ic, it would give John­son a chance to reunite with his Cen­tral Intel­li­gence co-star Kevin Hart, and the visu­al gag of man moun­tain John­son try­ing to find a habit that fits prac­ti­cal­ly writes itself.

A film that should be remade if only for the tagline ​‘The Rock vs The Rock’. Michael Bay’s orig­i­nal saw the direc­tor at the peak of his macho-action pow­ers, direct­ing Nico­las Cage and Sean Con­nery as an FBI chemist and a fed­er­al pris­on­er who fight ter­ror­ists who have tak­en over Alca­traz prison. John­son as a mild-man­nered chemist might be a stretch, so per­haps he could play a younger ver­sion of the Con­nery role oppo­site Don­ald Glover because, well, who wouldn’t want to see that pairing?

Which films would you like to see The Rock reboot? Let us know @LWLies