In a year full of epic rivalries — Batman vs. Superman, Captain America vs. Iron Man, Republicans vs. Third Eye Blind — the biggest clash is between an Austrian bodybuilder-turned-California politician and the star of Tooth Fairy.
Earlier this week, it was announced that CBS Television Studios picked up Pump, an eight-episode, hour-long drama about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s formative years spent working out in Venice Beach gyms. “The ’70s were such a colorful, transformational time, for me and for our entire country,” the Terminator said, “I look forward to bringing that color to people’s living rooms with the fantastic, deep characters and the multi-layered story lines of Pump.” Never one to be outdone (just ask Brendan Fraser), Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — who, with his impossible physique and winning personality, is to the 2010s what Arnold was to the 1980s and early 1990s — responded with a bodybuilding, Venice Beach-set show of his own called Muscle Beach.
Muscle Beach — an hourlong scripted drama — is set in a legendary bodybuilding gym in ’80s Venice Beach where a colorful tribe of lost souls struggle to reinvent themselves by bench-pressing their way to a bigger, better American dream, no matter what the cost. The series explores the body-obsessed fitness movement that took the nation by storm at the time of the supersized Reagan ’80s, the excess of the era and the many temptations of Los Angeles will expose the dark side of chasing dreams… Johnson will executive produce. (Via)
Dueling Muscle Beach shows! This is like Armageddon and Deep Impact, or Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached, coming out the same year, except better because Arnold and The Rock are associated. A documentary crew needs to somehow get involved. Footage of the Pump and Muscle Beach teams trying to record at the same gym at the same time and inevitably getting into a brawl, Anchorman-style, would be the best thing on television.
This news also begs the question: Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime vs. Dwayne Johnson now? (The correct answer is Schwarzenegger. The Rock can flex out of a cast; Arnold would have terminated it.)
(Via Variety)
