{"id":136857,"date":"2025-09-11T19:36:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T19:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/136857\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T19:36:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T19:36:09","slug":"dwayne-johnsons-the-smashing-machine-eyes-20m-opening-box-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/136857\/","title":{"rendered":"Dwayne Johnson&#8217;s &#8216;The Smashing Machine&#8217; Eyes $20M Opening: Box Office"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tA24\u2019s R-rated Dwayne Johnson movie <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/the-smashing-machine\/\" id=\"auto-tag_the-smashing-machine\" data-tag=\"the-smashing-machine\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Smashing Machine<\/a> arrived on three week tracking looking quite buff this AM with an outlook around $20 million when it hits theaters on Oct. 3. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tJohnson stars opposite Emily Blunt in a story about mixed-martial arts and UFC champion, Mark Kerr. The  pic\u2019s world premiere notched a 15 minute-plus standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival which brought Johnson to tears. The pic\u2019s director, Benny Safdie, also won the Silver Lion Best Director at the festival. Following the pic\u2019s North American premiere at TIFF, reviews on Rotten Tomatoes stand at 80% fresh with Deadline\u2019s own Damon Wise exclaiming, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/dwayne-johnson\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dwayne Johnson<\/a>\u00a0owns the whole thing with his truly remarkable work as fighter Mark Kerr, disappearing so fully underneath Kazu Hiru\u2019s astonishing prosthetics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tSmashing Machine\u2018s first choice is best with men over 25, followed by women over 25 (a serious component of Johnson\u2019s fanbase). Overall first choice is ahead of A24\u2019s Civil War, the studio\u2019s record stateside opener at $25.5M. Should Smashing Machine\u2018s projection hold, it will rank as A24\u2019s second highest debut ever at the domestic B.O. First choice is also quite close to that of 2023\u2019s Killers of the Flower Moon from director Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio; that movie opening to $23.2M during the actors strike when the cast couldn\u2019t promote. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tShould Smashing Machine hit its forecast, it will also be on par to another R-rated serious title that Johnson starred in back in 2013, Pain and Gain, opposite Mark Wahlberg. That movie, which followed Florida drug-taking bodybuilders immersed in an extortion ring, opened to $20.2M and finaled at $49.8M domestic and $87.3M global. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tSmashing Machine precedes the next big tentpole of the fall, Disney\u2019s Tron: Ares on Oct. 10. Also going wide on Oct. 3 is IFC\u2019s horror movie Good Boy and Bleecker Street\u2019s erotic thriller, Bone Lake. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A24\u2019s R-rated Dwayne Johnson movie The Smashing Machine arrived on three week tracking looking quite buff this AM&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,31998,75,337,56312],"class_list":{"0":"post-136857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-dwayne-johnson","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-the-smashing-machine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}