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Dwayne Johnson will be Kamehameha in Robert Zemeckis’ The King

Posted by on Aug 30, 2018 in All, biopic, drama, Film, News, thriller | 0 comments

Warner Bros. and New Line will be bringing us The King. The film will star Dwayne Johnson as Hawaiian King Kamehameha. Robert Zemeckis is set to direct a film from a script by Randall Wallace (Braveheart).

Kamehameha is the legendary king who was the first to unite the warring Hawaiian islands, which fulfilled the prophecy that surrounded his fabled life since birth. He took control of Hawaii’s destiny, and gave the islanders leverage in advancing the culture in trading with the foreign ships from Europe that began showing up on the shores of islands that must have seemed like paradise, albeit a sometimes dangerous one as explorers like Simon Metcalfe and Captain James Cook discovered before Kamehameha forcibly unified the islands.

Shooting is expected to begin in 2020.

Deadline had the news and also shared that Johnson had wanted to portray Kamehameha since The Mummy Returns.

I can recall it coming up in our very first meeting, late in the evening as he was being made up to play the Scorpion King, in a small role in The Mummy Returns, which became a spinoff and one of his first action starring turns. Johnson was just making the transition from his The Rock wrestling ring persona to acting, and he was very ambitious as he tried to become the first ring star to make that move and be taken seriously. Even then, I recall him saying that his dream was to one day play Kamehameha. Years later, when we did the Playboy Interview in Prague, Kamehameha was still on his mind. This was right after Johnson got that intricate tribal tattoo on his shoulder and chest that told a story about his roots.

Johnson got his tattoo in the modern way, but it tells a story of his own Polynesian roots that involve Samoa, New Zealand and Hawaii, the latter two places where Johnson spent many of his formative years before heading off to play football for the University of Miami Hurricanes, before following his father Rocky Johnson and grandfather into the wrestling ring. Long before he became one Hollywood’s most bankable stars.

Seven Bucks Productions’ Johnson, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia are producing with FlynnPictureCo’s Beau Flynn, Zemeckis and Wallace.

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