Dwayne Johnson-Led Holiday Film Starts Production; Adds J.K. Simmons & Bonnie Hunt To Cast

Let’s celebrate the heydays of this autumn’s box office where we can, the season greatly hampered by a lack of tentpole product.

EXCLUSIVE: In the wake of Dwayne Johnson notching the highest opening of his solo star career with this weekend’s Black Adam at $67M, his holiday movie, currently titled Red One, is ramping up with additional castings: Deadline has learned that Nick Kroll, Kristofer Hivju, Wesley Kimmel and Mary Elizabeth Ellis are joining.

That figure tops the $60 million opening that lead star Dwayne Johnson posted with the “Fast & Furious” spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw” in August 2019 and is consistent with the $67 million opening that Jason Momoa’s “Aquaman” earned in December 2018. It is also closer to the $70 million projections that independent trackers initially posted before lowering them to $60 million closer to release.

Dwayne Johnson’s epic “Black Adam” thunders into theaters this weekend. A film about 15 years in the making— Johnson recently shared a story on social media sharing a press hit about him playing the character in 2007—Johnson has just never given up on the anti-hero character.

After more than a decade’s journey to the big screen, New Line and DC Films’ Black Adam opens today, and while he hasn’t been a part of since the beginning, director Jaume Collet-Serra is happy to see this long journey come to its conclusion.

Even though “Black Adam” hasn’t even officially hit theaters yet, there’s already lots of buzz about the film’s end-credits scene. So, a spoiler alert if it’s not apparent to the reader what that scene entails: Henry Cavill returns as Superman to stare down Dwayne Johnson‘s Black Adam.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Black Adam,” a comic book adventure starring Dwayne Johnson, will loom large over the weekend box office. The film, from Warner Bros. and DC Comics, is expected to generate $60 million or more from 4,350 North American theaters between Friday and Sunday. That’ll easily be enough to dethrone “Halloween Ends,” which took the No. 1 spot last weekend with $41 million. “Black Adam” is squaring off against “Ticket to Paradise,” a romantic comedy featuring Julia Roberts and George Clooney, which is aiming to generate $15 million from 3,500 cinemas in its box office debut.

Dwayne Johnson was brought to tears during an appearance on The One Show alongside Rob Delaney.In an emotional interview, Delaney recalled a time after the death of his two-year-old son Henry when Johnson reached out to offer support.Henry passed away in January 2018, having undergone two years of treatment for a brain tumour.Appearing alongside Johnson on the chat show, Delaney said: “We hadn’t [worked together] at this point, but yeah he sent me a lovely tweet after Henry died, which he didn’t have to do, you know?“And that was very sweet and made me feel great, and then a couple of years later we did Hobbs And Shaw.”Johnson was visibly emotional after hearing Delaney’s anecdote. The Black Adam star then explained how Delaney’s grief had impacted him as a father of three girls.“That story, hearing that rocked us in our household,” said Johnson.Delaney described Johnson’s messages of support as “sweet” and a “good template” for how to approach someone grieving.In the first of two public tweets, Johnson simply wrote “Henry” and linked to Delaney’s Facebook post about his son’s passing.The second tweet read: “Stay strong my friend.

“Black Adam,” but the wildly in-demand actor and producer has been plotting this anti-hero role for over a decade, navigating the changing landscape of not just superhero movies in general, but the regime structure at Warner Bros. and DC to bring a gritty, nearly R-rated iteration of the character to the DC universe.

Dwayne Johnson attends the Black Adam photocall at the NH Collection Eurobuilding Hotel on Wednesday (October 19) in Madrid, Spain.