HBO has said goodbye to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and his sports comedy-drama series. Ballersbut this may be best for him.
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Dwayne Johnson in Ballers/Photo: HBO
Dwayne Johnson is among the highest-paid and in-demand actors in Hollywood, and many of his co-stars have been acting for years longer than he has. The former wrestler turned Hollywood celebrity worked for WWE before making his acting debut. The Mummy Returns (2001), playing the role of the Scorpion King opposite Brendan Fraser. The film was a success, and Johnson began to pay more attention to acting.
Hollywood Career Was So Good He Quit Wrestling
A few months later, he landed a starring role in the aptly titled spin-off Scorpio King in 2002. This was the start of his Hollywood career and the end of his days as an in-ring wrestling champion, although he only officially retired from WWE in 2019, by which time Johnson’s Hollywood resume had grown significantly.
Credit: Disney Parks.
Johnson has played roles in various films, also playing different characters. Among his film works ROCK (2005), Game plan (2007), Wise up (2008), Race to Witch Mountain (2009), Tooth Fairy (2010), Moana (2016), ed. Jungle Cruise (2021).
He also played bounty hunter and federal agent Luke Hobbs in Fast and furious series of films for over ten years, starting with Fast Five (2011) and continuing Fast and Furious 6 (2013), fast and furious 7 (2015), ed. Fate of the Furious (2017). He also starred in Hobbs and Shaw (2019), a spin-off of the franchise, alongside actor Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw.
But while he played federal agent Hobbs, he also took on the role of Spencer Strasmore, a former NFL football player trying to build his career as a sports agent in Florida, in the HBO series. Ballers.
Dwayne Johnson plays Spencer Strasmore in HBO’s Ballers. Photo credit: HBO
The sports comedy drama premiered on HBO on June 21, 2015, and concluded its fifth and final season on October 13, 2019, before eventually finding its home on HBO Max-owned Warner Bros. Discovery and is now referred to only as “Max”.
Johnson reportedly earned $700,000 per episode. Ballersbut despite his success as Spencer Strassmore and the success of the series, Warner Bros. Discovery sold the series to Netflix, where it was given a new lease of life.
HBO has dropped ‘The Rock’
HBO has gone through some changes lately. Vulture post early July 2023 indicates that viewers can no longer stream the HBO show on the streamer of the same name because HBO Max now it’s easy Max. Additionally, Warner Bros. executives Discovery took some pretty drastic measures in response to General Director David Zaslavincluding the sale of many of Max’s shows and series to his competitors, namely Netflix:
HBO and Netflix are striking a deal that will see the streamer get Insecure — and likely several other fan-favorite library games — in a new licensing deal first reported by Deadline. Additionally, additional titles currently being discussed for a possible deal include Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s comedy Ballers, early-aughts cult drama Six Feet Below (which aired its last episode in 2005), and a pair of films from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced the miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific.
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But since negotiations between Netflix and HBO are still very fluid, it’s entirely possible that all of the films being discussed will end up not being licensed by Netflix. Whatever the final form of the deal, the agreement is expected to be non-exclusive, allowing films to appear on both Netflix and Max WBD.
A win-win for everyone
Deadline reports that in its first week on Netflix, Ballers collected almost 700 million minutes watched. So it looks like HBO’s strategy of licensing some of its content to Netflix is working. Ballers debuted on Netflix in mid-September, and in its first seven days on the streamer, it ranked No. 9 in Netflix’s catalog and No. 5 among shows recently acquired by Netflix.
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It sounds like a win-win scenario for everyone involved, and the series’ impressive numbers also signal something about the drama itself, as it debuted eight years ago and typically drew an audience of 8.8 million viewers per episode, making it its most popular. I’ve been watching half-hour shows on HBO for over six years. Now on Netflix Dwayne Johnson and Ballers seem to be enjoying a kind of resurrection.