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Dwayne Johnson put in the work to get his big screen ‘Black Adam’ bigger than he is in the comic books

By Stephen Iervolino Jan 26, 2022 | 3:00 PM


ABC/Randy Holmes

(NOTE LANGUAGE) While most superheroes have bodies most can only dream about, Dwayne Johnson may be the only actor to be even more ripped than his godly alter-ego, in the upcoming Black Adam

The Rock is no slouch in the gym on a normal day, as any of his 293 million Instagram followers can attest, but he tells Men’s Journal his “exhausting” regimen for Black Adam pushed even him to his limits.

“The training we did for this movie was the most arduous I’ve ever done in my life,” the 49-year-old Johnson admits, explaining the goal was to “surpass” Adam’s physique in the pages of DC Comics. 

“One of the things that drew me to Black Adam is his origin,” Johnson says. “He started out enslaved. Any time you have a character…who has wrongfully been held down by others, it means so much more when they begin to rise up.” 

He adds, “[A]s we all know, if you do something wrong, Superman and Batman are gonna try and bring you to justice. If you do something wrong to Black Adam, you’re going to die. It’s that simple.”

The star, producer, and entrepreneur also teases of a future project, “We’re going to bring one of the biggest, most bada** games to the screen — one that I’ve played for years.”

The Rock won’t reveal which game he’s adapting, though Johnson’s likeness was recently added to the super-popular multiplayer game Fortnite.

For now, he’ll only say, “Of course we’re going to do right by our gamer friends — but really we’re just going to make a great movie.”

Black Adam, which also stars Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate, Aldis Hodge as Hawkman, and Quintessa Swindell as Cyclone, opens July 29.

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