The Smashing Machine film draws lowest box office opening ever for The Rock

According to Deadline.com, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s film The Smashing Machine had a disappointing performance at the box office with a $6.2M opening, the lowest of his career as a leading man. Originally tracking at $20M, the biopic on UFC champ Mark Kerr was hurt by competition from Taylor Swift’s The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, which dominated premium screens and debuted at $30M–$32M. This underperformed even compared to Johnson’s prior lows like Faster at $8.5M.

“Smashing Machine is an arthouse film; it was never positioned as a mainstream play. It’s very non-traditional in its narrative, some critics get it, others do not. This is a 180 from Johnson’s previous R-rated movie, Pain & Gain, under the direction of Michael Bay and with co-star Mark Wahlberg which was a glossy, major studio take on drugs and beefcakes, opening in the 2013 pre-streaming era to $20.2M. The UFC faithful clearly see that it’s not the Johnson they wanna see.”