Lost in the long list of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s blockbuster action films and musclehead franchises is the 2003 action comedy, The Rundown, which was supposed to be a coming out party for the WWE Champion as a full-fledged, bona fide leading man. Unfortunately, despite a surprisingly strong critical response, the film was a failure at the box office, as it only earned $80 million globally on a budget of $85 million. With that in mind, it’s hard to believe that the Rock and Seann William Scott would ever be called back for a sequel, but things have changed in the last 10 years, and a guy with this much star power basically gets to do whatever he wants.
So it makes sense that while promoting his latest film, Lone Survivor, director Peter Berg admitted that he definitely wants to make a sequel to The Rundown.
“I really want to do it. I’ve talked to Dwayne. I have an actor in mind that I can’t say that I want to work with Dwayne on it, and we want to do it.” (Via JoBlo)
That quote has now turned into “Peter Berg and The Rock are in talks” and “The Rundown 2 is being developed” on other sites, but this is more likely just a passing quote from a guy who’d like a check to make another movie and maybe validate the original film in the process. But if you haven’t seen The Rundown, it’s definitely worth a lazy weekend afternoon watch, because I think it’s Johnson’s most underrated film to date and is way better than the meager earnings suggest.
But then, I’ll watch anything that has Christopher Walken overacting like he’s never overacted before.