Dwayne Johnson shed 30 pounds of muscle, grew curly gray hair and a matching gray beard, and sat for five hours of daily prosthetic work to vanish into a 70-year-old man he calls the Chicken Man. The set photos landed October 20 from Coney Island, Brooklyn, where he’s filming Benny Safdie’s Lizard Music.
In the shots he wears a tan bucket hat, a tan overcoat, a blue shirt and tie, and sneakers, walking with a slice of pizza beside young co-star Theo Clark Leber, who plays a boy named Victor and carries an oversized lizard plush. Johnson, 54, has traded his bald head and bulk for age spots and earrings in both ears.
The makeup is by Kazu Hiro, who worked with him on The Smashing Machine and recently aged Tom Cruise for Digger.
Lizard Music is a live-action and CGI hybrid of Daniel Pinkwater’s 1976 children’s novel, written and directed by Safdie. A boy left on his own finds a secret late-night broadcast of sentient lizards playing music, which leads him to the eccentric Chicken Man and his beloved chicken, Claudia. It’s the second Johnson-Safdie collaboration after The Smashing Machine.
Johnson has called signing on an “easy yes,” saying it took Safdie about 45 minutes to convince him. At D23 in August he described the project as “Willy Wonka but from the mind of Benny Safdie.”
This week he posted from New York: “I’ve never shot a film in NYC that I’ve starred in. A first for me and a real honor. Benny is truly New York’s son and it’s been so cool seeing him back home and in his hood, as we shoot our love letter to NYC.”
The cast also includes Regina Hall, Alicia Silverstone, Tim Heidecker, Arya Parvathi, and Andrew Dice Clay, with voice roles from Colman Domingo, Jeff Goldblum, Rachel McAdams, and David Krumholtz. It’s set for release Christmas Day, December 25, 2027, through Amazon MGM Studios.