Dwayne Johnson has claimed that his new Christmas film Red One was inspired by an Imax viewing of Oppenheimer.
READ MORE: ‘Oppenheimer’ review: Christopher Nolan’s mind-blowing biopic hits like a bomb to the brain
The festive action-adventure stars Johnson as the head of North Pole security, who teams up with Chris Evans’ bounty hunter to find a kidnapped Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) on Christmas Eve.
The film, which currently sits on a 35% score on Rotten Tomatoes, was apparently influenced by an unlikely source, however, in the form of Christohper Nolan’s Oscar-winning, billion-pound blockbuster Oppenheimer.
As Johnson recently explained to Imax, it was a viewing of the Cillian Murphy film that inspired him to make sure Red One would live up to the largest screen format anywhere in the world.
It’s gonna… rock! See what we did there, @TheRock? #RedOneMovie pic.twitter.com/H0pvoZSaG3
— IMAX (@IMAX) November 11, 2024
“With Red One, our intention was to make a movie that you can enjoy on the biggest screen possible,” Johnson said. “Legitimately the biggest screens possible are Imax. I was midway through shooting Red One and I had an opportunity to see Oppenheimer. I watched in the Imax theatre where Christopher Nolan watches and screens his movies. Him and Emma [Thomas], his wife. I even asked to let me sit where Chris sits. They said, ‘Chris sits here.’”
“I watch Oppenheimer. It was amazing, but I was thinking: ‘Holy shit. Red One on this screen and with this technology could be game over.’ I remember texting [director Jake Kasdan] a picture of my bare chest and a picture of the screen and we realized how cool [Imax] would be.”
The film was reported last year to have resulted in Johnson receiving the biggest fee ever for an actor in a single film. Puck claimed that he received $50million for the role, surpassing the $40million received by Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War and Will Smith in King Richard.
In other Johnson news, he recently addressed some of his rumoured on-set behaviour, admitting that he pees in bottles on set to save time.
The rumours about Johnson’s behaviour were first reported in The Wrap earlier this year, where it was claimed that he also arrived to set late frequently – sometimes up to eight hours late.
Addressing those rumours, Johnson added: “Yeah, that happens…But not that amount, by the way. That was a bananas amount. That’s crazy. Ridiculous.”
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