Dwayne Johnson’s Biggest Challenge For Journey 3 Revealed
It also makes sense that as Dwayne Johnson continues on with his career, he sees starting fresh stories as a better way to diversify and keep his career going.
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Dwayne Johnson likes the idea of becoming a billionaire. This keeps the star known as The Rock quite busy. He is actively working on several films at any given time. As an entrepreneur, he owns a tequila company, an energy drink business, and more. He has an active social media presence, which makes it clear how much of his time is taken up just by working out and eating. It takes Dwayne Johnson months just to get back to Vin Diesel in their ongoing public feud. It’s no surprise then that The Rock needs one of his business partners to address where they’re at with making some of their upcoming sequels, or what that producer has to say about why some of them aren’t happening.
Hiram Garcia famously works with Dwayne Johnson via his production company, Seven Bucks Productions. Garcia is the president of production. He recently did an interview with Collider. During the interview, the biggest thing he did was give updates on various sequels. His answers were revealing, most notably with what he had to say about Journey 3. Dwayne Johnson had actually claimed via his social media back at the start of 2018 that the film was cancelled and not anywhere in his plans, but he still gets asked about the possibility. At the time, The Rock said he wasn’t doing it because the story didn’t work for him creatively. Hiram Garcia shared more, saying:
But it is a challenge of balancing, ‘Okay, what are the sequels we’re going to do,’ because we’ve been very fortunate that the majority of the projects we’ve done, there’s been a request for sequel, and his availability has always been the thing that made it a challenge.
Dwayne Johnson’s Producer Hiram Garcia Speaking to Collider
This makes a lot of sense. His schedule would understandably be the biggest challenge to taking on any new projects. When Dwayne Johnson went on Saturday Night Live and announced that he was franchise viagra back in 2015, he likely wasn’t aware how far that was going to go. It would have been hard to guess that in 2021, he’d still be getting asked about Journey 3 when Journey 2 was released all the way back in 2012. The Rock doesn’t do a movie that fans won’t expect to see a sequel from. Black Adam hasn’t released yet, but fans are already asking about Black Adam 2. And why wouldn’t they be? Even when answering the question about Journey 3, Hiram Garcia himself brought up a Black Adam sequel, saying, “We have very big plans, obviously, for the DC Universe, if the fans perceive the way we want. We have a lot of stories planned for that.”
A big question many Dwayne Johnson fans may have, then, is why he keeps making original movies. Why does The Rock make Red Notice instead of getting Hobbs & Shaw 2 done? Why does he make Black Adam instead of Journey 3? What is the logic behind waiting so long to make Jumanji 4 when his previous runs in that franchise have brought in so much money at the box office? Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle brought in $962.5 million. Most people would expect a star to clear their schedule and make sequels for that franchise as fast as possible. How can Dwayne Johnson be too busy for sequels that can bring in nearly a billion dollars?
All Hiram Garcia says is that Dwayne Johnson’s schedule makes things difficult. Dwayne Johnson himself has discussed the “Moses effect“. He says that when a story is really awesome and tempting, it has the ability to push other projects to the side. So in 2018 when he said that Journey 3 didn’t have the story pull to bring him into the project, he likely meant that and seems to be sticking to that kind of thinking in his strategy.
It also makes sense that as Dwayne Johnson continues on with his career, he sees starting fresh stories as a better way to diversify and keep his career going. If he did nothing but sequels to one or two franchises, then he’d be known for those franchises and nothing else. Instead, Dwayne Johnson has carefully built a brand that his audience follows from film to film. The same people who watched Jungle Cruise in 2021, an adventure story for Disney, were also ready to tune in for Red Notice, an action thriller for Netflix. These are two fairly different franchises and stories, but Dwayne Johnson is a draw that few stars are these days, and that is helping him build up those billionaire dreams.
It seems likely that at this point, Journey 3 isn’t going to happen. Dwayne Johnson said so back in 2018, and Hiram Garcia seems to believe the star is too busy as of the end of 2021. Movies that are on the schedule for The Rock include DC’s League of Super-Pets, Black Adam, Red One, Hobbs & Shaw 2, and Jumanji 4.
