Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s latest film, The Smashing Machine, has fallen flat at the box office, pulling in just $6.2 million in its opening weekend, the lowest debut of his career as a leading man. The film, a biographical drama about former UFC champion Mark Kerr, had been projected to open with around $20 million but faced stiff competition and limited mainstream appeal.

Much of its struggle can be attributed to the dominance of Taylor Swift’s The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, which launched the same weekend and pulled an estimated $30–32 million, commanding premium screens and a major share of the moviegoing audience. By comparison, The Smashing Machine even trailed Johnson’s previous career low, Faster, which opened at $8.5 million in 2010.

Industry insiders told Deadline that the film’s unconventional approach played a part in its underperformance. “Smashing Machine is an arthouse film; it was never positioned as a mainstream play. It’s very non-traditional in its narrative , some critics get it, others do not,” the outlet noted. “This is a 180 from Johnson’s previous R-rated movie, Pain & Gain, directed by Michael Bay with co-star Mark Wahlberg, which opened to $20.2 million in 2013. The UFC faithful clearly see that it’s not the Johnson they wanna see.”

The film represents a creative shift for Johnson, focusing more on emotional depth and personal struggle than on the explosive action and spectacle that have defined his past roles. While The Smashing Machine has drawn praise from critics for Johnson’s performance and its gritty realism, audiences expecting a typical Rock blockbuster appear to have stayed away.

Although its theatrical debut has been disappointing, the film could still gain momentum through word of mouth, awards recognition, or a later streaming release. For now, however, it marks one of the rare box-office misfires in Dwayne Johnson’s otherwise successful career.

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