If you’ve ever played a Rampage game, you’re familiar with the act of punching skyscrapers until they turn into piles of rubble. After doing this a few hundred times, you’d get tired of it and not play a Rampage game for another five years or so. But what if you didn’t have to press any buttons, and you just wanted to watch someone level cities for two hours? Who would you want to watch do that? The Rock. You’d want to watch The Rock do that.

New Line has wanted to make a Rampage movie a reality since at least 2011, and it seems that the project is finally about to get off the ground. The Hollywood Reporter reports that The People’s Champ is attached to the film, in which he’ll be teaming up once again with San Andreas producer Beau Flynn. Production is expected to start next summer, which would likely set it for release somewhere in 2017.

I’m conflicted. The Rock has proven himself to be the one pro wrestler (so far) that has the chops and natural charisma to turn a WWE career into genuine Hollywood superstardom. That said, even he hasn’t been able to escape the shoddy reputation of game-to-movie projects. He starred in the critically-panned Doom near the beginning of his acting career in 2005, and a planned Spy Hunter film never got off the ground soon afterwards (although a game featuring his likeness and voice did).

Whether the film has much to do with the Rampage series beyond “monsters destroy stuff” remains to be seen, as does The Rock’s role. Since the games were based on humans that morphed into these city-crushing beasts, it’s conceivable that the Brahma Bull could actually be playing George the gorilla. If this is the case, I eagerly look forward to the scene where the eight-time WWE champion accidentally eats a toilet.

The Rampage news comes just weeks after the announcement that Dwayne "Flex Kavana" Johnson will be playing Jack Burton in a Big Trouble in Little China remake. I played a lot of Rampage, I love Big Trouble in Little China, and I love seeing a wrestler actually make it on the big screen, but I’m reserving judgment on these recent announcements until I see the finished products. Video game movies and remakes of classics don’t have sterling reputations, so The Rock might have his work cut out for him in the next year or two.

I don't know what to think about this movie, other than that it can't be any worse than Pixels.

what

Anything is possibly, I guess. They turned Battleship into a movie.

Scoops!

Yeah man, I like The Rock but he doesn't need to be in everything. I'm concerned about the remake because Big Trouble in Little China is already perfect in every way. And according to a friend of the site:

“I’m ambivalent about a remake,” Carpenter told Speakeasy. “On the other hand, it depends on how much they pay me.”

And Rampage? Will it be like San Andreas with big ass monsters? Ok, I'd see that.

I miss news stories about Triple H's hair.

Don't remake Big Trouble in Little China

The Rampage movie should just be four monsters all attacking a city at once and The Rock has to figure out how to stop them

Whoopee, another disaster movie!

At least it's not based on Redneck Rampage.

What I care about is this Big Trouble in Little China thing. That movie is so perfect. I don't know what a remake would even be, unless they went the new RoboCop route and made it more serious.

Maaaan I don't want that.

that's pretty funny. thanks dan

If there isn't a scene with a naked person running through the city, holding their junk, they fucked up.

This is the first time I've ever even heard of these Rampage games.

Rampage at least has a chance of being the good kind of bad.

There's something special about the fact that Dan wrote this. I can only imagine Austin had something written up and Dan chocked him from across the country so he could put one up :p

This is weird.

He should stop agreeing to be in shitty movies and start being the new Arnold in good movies

It's a big dumb game about big dumb kaiju monsters wrecking cities. All they have to do is rip off Pacific Rim and call it a day.

Ryckert on the news tip!

Oh this sounds fucking stupid. And I'm a huge fan of kaiju movies and Rampage.

I really enjoy Dwayne Johnson as an actor. His new show Ballers is fantastic and is incredible on the FF series. I'll probably watch this, because why not? If its bad, it'll be hilarious. If its good, then awesome!

Recently played Rampage on the N64 again. What a dumb game.

Dan, you're drunk.

Is this real or a joke. This sounds crazy. I hope the rock is one of the monsters!!! and not just some guy trying to stop them or something. But which monster would he be???

I just want a funky feature length music video showing various monsters dry humping buildings and punching them to death.

The Rock can be in a helicopter reacting to it.

Since a game like Rampage doesn't have a lot of messy concepts like story and character development it doesn't seem like there is anything there to really "ruin". it just seems like they would make a tongue-in-cheek action/comedy with a lot of buildings being destroyed.

The Rock movies are like pizza. Even when they're bad, they're still kinda good.

The Rock is a biochemist trying to create a cure for tissue regeneration and inadvertently becomes a lizard monster.

I think this movie is stupid. However, the one way they can make it so stupid it comes back around to being dope is to make a trilogy. That's right, George, Lizzie and Ralph get their own movies and at the end of part three there's a mindblowing teaser - it's a QUADRUPLOGY! RAMPAGE 4: THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN COMING 2020 HOLD ON TO YOUR FUCKING ASSES

San Andreas wasn't a video game movie?

@theht: it should really be Pitbull making those stupid ass faces he does.

None of the movies mentioned here sound good so I'm just gonna avoid all of them.

This is outrageous. I can't wait!

Someone should just digitally add them to San Andreas. Done. No more other work.

Yes, please. I hope those movies are less San Andreas and more Journey 2.

I'll take a rampage movie in hopes its a campy monster movie, but leave big trouble in little china alone.

Back when I played Rampage on the Commodore 64 I got to level 134 on a single session... I used to love that game. Is the Rock playing George? He kinda makes me think of George.

Guesses on Lizzy and Ralph anyone?

@wandrecanada: Lizzy Caplan and Ralph Fiennes.

"Dan, you're going to have to start writing more content if you want to pull your weight around here" -Jeff

and this is what we get, not that I'm complaining!

What's wrong with awful movies? Even awful video game-based movies? There is plenty of room in the world for bad action movies. I loved playing Rampage when I was a kid and hearing The Rock is going to be in this movie has me very interested. Maybe this won't be a "go to the theatre" movie for me but I'll watch it when it's digitally released.

But there are no giant robots. What if the Rock plays himself in the movie, and their answer to the Rampage monsters is to somehow blow him up to monster-size?

This Script writes it's self. I guarantee you The Rock becomes a giant monster in the last 10 minutes and starts power bombing the other monsters. I can't fucking wait.

Wasn't Uwe Boll trying to do this too?

the rock was a sports entertainer. That guy was never a pro wrestler

Considering Uwe Boll made several Rampage movies that had nothing to do with the game with the same name, I was somehow waiting for an actual Rampage movie to happen. Now I don't know what to feel. As a child back in the 80s I used to play Rampage on a Zenith "laptop" with a green/darker green screen so it's special to me I guess.

I played it on an Amstrad CPC which also had a green screen. I miss Rampage. Also, they should've cast Rampage Jackson.

@benmo316: They're awful?

How is there not some new mobile Rampage game out there.

This will never come out.

Always preferred that Intercontinental title.

San Andreas was a pretty lame movie but I enjoyed the action segments because I saw it in D-Box. A movie with a big monster tearing down skyscrapers might produce the same level of enjoyment in D-Box.