Dwayne Johnson Saves Hollywood?

Skyscraper is the new movie with Dwayne Johnson. Unlike the Incredibles 2, which is already the highest-grossing animated film in the United States and which trades on the massive appeal of the first movie, Skyscraper is a disaster film that sells because of the star of the movie and no much else.

And this used to be standard practice in Hollywood. The films were made for the actors such as Mary Pickford, Doris Day and more recent names such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Johnny Depp. Not every single project with these names were blockbusters, but the famous actors drew a lot of attention. This era is now over, but there is still one man who can open a movie, and his name is Dwayne Johnson also known as The Rock.

When we look at the numbers, we see that Vin Diesel, Johnson’s rival, managed to gross about $1.6 billion for his movies Fast and Furious 8 and xXx: Return of Xander Cage. However, there is one man who grossed more for 2017, and you can guess his name. The movie called Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was an eponymous hit, and it earned a massive $961 million, something not many people expected. That is more money than films such as Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, Wonder Woman and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean. The Rock also appeared in Fast 8, meaning that the films with him grossed over $2 billion in 2017.

And Jumanji tells us a different story than any other film that got released. It earned that much money mostly on the charisma of the star. Yes, you could consider this movie to be a sequel to the original with late Robin Williams, which aired in the mid-1990s, but the original one was not why people went to the theaters to watch the new family-friendly flick. Most of the people went to see Johnson, who was co-starred by Karen Gillan, Jack Black, and Kevin Hart. And when looking at the films in the top 20 list, you will not be able to find one which was sold by its star. For instance, people didn’t go to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi because of the actors.