Dwayne Johnson has been trying to find himself of late at the box-office. His feud with Vin Diesel didn't help, which consequentially, whether you want to admit it or not, had Johnson leave the franchise for a spinoff film.
It doesn't look like Johnson's stock has gone any higher either this past weekend as his "Skyscraper," which felt like Die Hard injected on a ton of elephant steroids, made only $9 million on Friday night, its projected 3-day week-end take right now stands at $24 to $28 million. That's what it would be making by Sunday night — a third-place finish behind "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation and Disney-Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Ok, fine. I'll concede that Jumanji was a giant hit. However, in all essence, it was not necessarily a typical Johnson-driven vehicle. However, "Skyscraper," "Rampage," and "Baywatch" all, very much, tried to bank him as the lead. This should be of concern for Johnson, who seems to be making countless movies a year. Maybe he's over-saturated the market and people are starting to get tired of his shtick, who knows, but if he didn't have "Jumanji" in there, we'd be seriously talking about his market value having gone down.
Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood-Elsewhere said it best:
"Could it be that audiences are finally waking up to Hollywood Elsewhere’s longstanding assessment of Johnson, which is that he is fundamentally opposed to making good films and that his default instinct is to topline high-concept action films that are relentlessly stupid and implausible? In short, did audiences steer clear because critics are saying that Skyscraper is so dumb it’ll turn your brain into a volleyball? Are they finally starting to realize that Johnson has repeatedly shown contempt for audiences by making nothing but crap?"
Wells then refers us to a rebuttal from Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro:
“There [are] a few reasons why Skyscraper is in shambles,” he wrote this morning, “but chiefly Johnson’s family crowd here is being swallowed up whole by both Hotel Transylvania 3 and the second weekend of Ant-Man and the Wasp.” He also said something about Johnson’s brand being over-exposed with the recent double application of Jumanji and Rampage, i..e, “where’s the fresh face?” He quotes a RelishMix observation about Skyscraper “literally [looking] like a Die Hard update, but with a hero challenged by a prosthetic.” But shouldn’t the fact that Skyscraper is a shitty film…shouldn’t that at least be factored in? Quality counts for something, no?