Move over, Mark Kerr, and make way for the Chicken Man.
Dwayne Johnson was spotted in Brooklyn on Tuesday shooting his new movie “Lizard Music” from director Benny Safdie. Like with his previous collaboration with the “Uncut Gems” director, 2025’s “The Smashing Machine,” Johnson has gone through a serious prosthetic transformation. This time around, instead of a hulking MMA behemoth, Johnson has turned into a 70-year-old known as the Chicken Man.
In the set photos, Johnson, sporting a tan bucket hat and coat and holding a slice of pizza, walks alongside his young co-star Theo Clark Leber, who carries an oversized lizard plush. The artist behind Johnson’s look is Kazu Hiro, who just turned Tom Cruise into a geriatric oil baron for “Digger.”
“Lizard Music,” based on Daniel Pinkwater’s children’s book of the same name, follows a young boy who “stumbles upon strange lizard musicians on late-night TV, leading him to befriend a peculiar man with an elderly chicken,” according to an official logline. Other cast members include Rachel McAdams, Colman Domingo, David Krumholtz, Jeff Goldblum, Alicia Silverstone and Regina Hall.
From Amazon MGM Studios, “Lizard Music” is set for release on Christmas Day 2027.
During a career retrospective talk at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival, Johnson said it was an easy yes to sign on for “Lizard Music,” sharing that it only took “about 45 minutes” of convincing from Safdie. He also revealed that he shed 30 pounds of muscle to play the Chicken Man.
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“I’m so excited to get a chance to hopefully transform again like I was able to do in ‘Smashing Machine,’” Johnson said. “[It means] eating less chicken.”
From Variety US