Young Rock TV Series to Focus on Early Days of Dwayne Johnson
Young Rock will tell the story of Dwayne Johnson's teenage years and beyond.
We all know what the Rock is cooking nowadays. One of the biggest stars in Hollywood, the former WWE champion is one of the best in the business, starring in hit after hit at the box office. Now we’ll get a chance to see what Dwayne Johnson can cook up on television.
NBC has given a straight-to-series order to Young Rock, a comedy starring Johnson that will chronicle Johnson’s younger days before he became a wrestling superstar. The show will produced by Universal Television, along with Johnson’s own Seven Bucks Productions. Johnson’s business partner, former WWE head writer Brian Gewirtz, is listed as a producer on the project as well.
NBC announced the new series, which has been ordered for 11 episodes — and Johnson will appear in all of them — during the Television Critics Association press tour on Saturday.
Johnson already has a relationship with NBC, hosting the Titan Games show.
“I have talked about this wild and unpredictable and unbelievable childhood that I had,” Johnson said. “I’ve told many many stories, many of them unbelievable, but all of them true. You’ll find Young Rock wreaking havoc in the streets of Hawaii, getting arrested doing a lot of things I shouldn’t do. We were evicted off the island and moved, to all places, Nashville, Tennessee,” he said. “Imagine me being in downtown Nashville, listening to country music at 15 years old, buying my first car from a crackhead for $70. We go into my high school years as Young Rock, and my role as a University of Miami football star, until I got beaten out of my position by a young man named Warren Sapp, who went on to become one of the greatest defensive tackles of all time.”
“Then we (see) Young Rock as a professional wrestler, more importantly at the critical time before WWE, when I was wrestling for $40 a match [in the] parking lots of used-car dealers and flea markets. Those were the years that were very formative and helped shape me. Now what’s crazy about this whole thing … the confluence of wild personalities that came in and out of my life during these times, all these years, are just fascinating. From my heroes Andre the Giant to Muhammed Ali to Ronald Reagan … It was almost as if I’d been told I had the childhood of Forrest Gump, where people weave in and out of my life.”
When Johnson was asked how he would be worked into each episode, he said …
“We have found a really cool, fun creative way to weave me into the show, into every episode,” he said, without elaborating. But when he pitched NBC, he said, “at the end all jaws were dropped, all hands were raised (and NBC said) ‘we are in 100%.’”
Seven Bucks Productions also revealed a teaser:
No word yet on when we can expect Young Rock to premiere, but we’ll update this with more information as it becomes available.
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Mike has covered almost everything working for The Eagle Tribune, a paper north of Boston. He can be found in rinks around New England covering college…