After a rapturous Venice bow for The Smashing Machine, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on Sunday talked about his next collaboration with director Ben Safdie for Lizard Music.

“I’m your Chicken Man,” Johnson recalled telling Safdie after he was pitched for 45 minutes on reteaming for Lizard Music after they wrapped production on The Smashing Machine. Their next joint project is based on the Daniel Pinkwater kids novel about a young boy who becomes involved with intelligent lizard musicians who tell him of a little-known invasion from outer space.

Johnson talked up Lizard Music as a “whimsical” movie about a boy who stumbles on a secret late-night broadcast of lizards playing music, only to pass through a hidden door to meet a Chicken Man, to be played by Johnson.

The Rock is in Toronto for a North American premiere of The Smashing Machine, where Johnson performs the role of real-life MMA legend Mark Kerr. “I wanted something like this for such a long time,” Johnson said during an informal conversation at TIFF at the Royal Alexandra Theater, about doing a movie creatively for himself, rather than acting in a Hollywood tentpole aimed at his legions of fans.

Johnson recounted having to transform his own body into that of Mark Kerr. “He had this rare unicorn build of man who so dominant as a wrestler and with all of these fast twitch muscles, on top of being a heavyweight,” he recalled.

Long story short, Johnson had to gain weight for the role, and develop muscles other than his own frame to move more quickly in the ring. “He’s still a beast of a man, but still so soft-spoken,” he added about Kerr, who will attend the North American premiere in Toronto.

Johnson, as a former pro wrestler, also recalled as part of his transition to becoming a Hollywood movie star following in the footsteps of his late and Canadian father, Rocky Johnson, a WWE Hall of Famer, in getting into the ring.

“I think about my dad, about the complicated relationship we had, but how life can come full circle and years later I can come back and have this life,” Johnson said after touching down in Toronto. Born and raised in Nova Scotia as Wade Douglas Bowles, Rocky Johnson started wrestling in 1964 in and around Toronto. 

His trajectory from the ring to Hollywood film sets includes roles in The Scorpion King, star turns in the Fast & Furious franchise, the Jumanji series and Disney tentpoles like the Moana films and the action-adventure Jungle Cruise.

“I remember a kid who was trying. I was just jumping off a cliff. That was the thing that really launched my career,” Johnson told the TIFF audience after watching a clip from The Scorpion Kings, which was shot in the Sahara desert and called for action sequences.

“From action to cut, I fell in love. I was bitten,” he said of catching the acting bug. At the same time, Johnson said it took a long time before he could bring his Hollywood acting chops to a more serious movie role. “I’d been wanting to do something like this, it just took all that time to do something like The Smashing Machine,” he added.

Johnson’s Hollywood career has also included work as a producer and co-owner of Seven Bucks Productions, launched in 2021 with partner Dany Garcia. “We loved movies, and if you love movies, you want to be part of creating movies in any way you can,” he said of launching the production banner whose name recalled his early attempt to join the Canadian Football League as part of the Calgary Stampeders as a path into the National Football League, only to be cut from the CFL team roster.

Back home in Florida, Johnson recalled looking into his pocket to see how much money he had at 22 years of age and having to move back in with his parents. He counted $7 in his pocked.

“We all get knocked down. Everybody goes through that,” Johnson recounted, as he also thanked former Stampeders coach Wally Buono, who is now with the B.C. Lions, for ultimately paving his way to big success in Hollywood after standing in his way from breaking into pro football.

Johnson was joined on stage in Toronto by co-stars Emily Blunt and writer/director Safdie. “When I first Dwayne, I saw this swirl behind his eyes. There’s this incredible magnetism that draws you in. but there’s also complex emotions just waiting to get out,” Safdie said of his need to collaborate with Johnson.

“We sat under this umbrella and talked and shared our souls. I was just taken by how different he was than what I had imagined,” Blunt recalled when first working with Johnson on Jungle Cruise in Hawaii as she discovered, as had Safdie, a vulnerability inside The Rock that was coming out.