Felix Upton on July 17, 2020
The Rock has many projects going at once. A project with Headlocked Comics just couldn’t work out.
While speaking with Wrestling Inc, Michael Kingston stated that he was working on a project with Dwayne Johnson. They couldn’t make it happen because “branding-wise it wasn’t the best fit.”
He then went on to say that he always wanted it to be a cartoon. This project fell through around the time when Jumanji really took off as a franchise as well.
“I think it was right about the time he sorta became ‘Disney Superman’ and I think the material was a little darker in tone than they wanted. I think if I had got him five years ago, I would have been ok and maybe Headlocked would have been Ballers. It was right when Jumanji took off and he was doing straight Disney action franchises and stuff like that. They liked the material a lot, but I think branding-wise it wasn’t necessarily the best fit. And that’s fine as you want people who are gonna do justice to the material.
“I’ll be honest with you, I always wanted it to be a cartoon. I know that sounds weird, but when I did wrestling comics nobody did wrestling comics. Nobody really does adult animation so I feel like doing a dramatic animated series… and honestly I like to use wrestlers as voices. This has always been a series created by wrestlers. Jerry Lawler does the covers. Michel Mulipola, who is a Samoan wrestler from New Zealand, does the interiors and I’ve collaborated with 40 different wrestlers. This has always been a piece of art that, aside from myself and Joe Thompson, it’s been produced by wrestlers. So, I’d love to be able to make it a cartoon and have wrestlers do the voices and push the envelope in that direction.”
He explained that things didn’t get too far, but they did explore the possibilities about working together. Bringing Headlocked Comics to television in this capacity wasn’t going to happen.
“It was a general exploration of the brand and wanting to maybe take it to television and make it a cable drama or something like that. I’d be fine with that but it always makes me nervous that they say if you film one bump for television, then you’ve got to do it like 30 times. Part of me would feel guilty if some poor dude had to take 200 bumps an episode just to film 5 [laughs],”
The Rock has a lot of people wanting to work with him. It’s understandable that he can’t be a part of everything. It would have still been pretty interesting to see The Rock’s take on Headlock Comics’ stories.
July 17, 2020 5:22 pm
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