Iron Man 3 director Shane Black signed on to direct an adaptation of the 1930s pulp fair Doc Savage in a film for Sony. The project has been lingering the background for sometime, though he mentioned during a recent interview that he wanted Dwayne Johnson for the title role. “We’re hoping to make it sometime next year,” he said at the time, eluding to a 2017 production start. He continued by name-dropping The Rock and said, “I made a decision that Dwayne is the guy. It’s on the back burner while he’s busy.” Well, it seems like the two made it work.
The only other movie Johnson could possibly be referring to is the next Predator, which Black is directing for a 2018 release. But Doc Savage seems far more likely, and that means the actor will be busier still.
I used to think Jennifer Lawrence was the hardest working actor in Hollywood, bouncing from The Hunger Games to her next David O. Russell film to X-Men to a press tour and back — and for a while she was. But now Johnson has her beat. He recently finished wrapping the Baywatch movie reboot and went almost immediately to filming Furious 8 in Cuba with director F. Gary Gray. He also performed voice work for Disney Animation’s Moana and is set to appear in the Jumanji reboot and DC’s Shazam!. On top of that, a sequel to San Andreas was announced and he also has Rampage, based on the classic arcade game.
Though, the character of Clark Savage Jr. is unlike anything he’s tackled before. His mind was molded by his father to superhuman levels, affording Savage strength, martial arts abilities, and vast amounts of knowledge. “We’re shooting it as though it’s in the ‘30s, including all the Capra-esque elements of 1930s films like You Can’t Take It With You,” Black told Collider in a 2013 interview. “The idea of ‘What if Jimmy Stewart were a stone-cold killer?’ basically. It’s that kind of combination which we enjoy,” though he later clarified in an email to us, “He always tempered his violent skills with kindness and a social conscience, preferring never to take human life.”
via Collider