Dwayne Johnson doesn’t really tend to star in R-rated movies anymore, having only made two appearances in age-restricted projects in the last decade – and even then, 2015’s Empire State was largely released straight to video. The internet doesn’t care, though, with the campaign already underway to see the more brutal version of Black Adam made available to the masses.
It was only last night that the team behind the impending DCEU blockbuster revealed that the initial edit had to go through four rounds of cuts with the MPAA before it was approved for a PG-13 release, so it sounds as though Johnson lived up to his promise of pushing the envelope as far as superhumanly possible.
The actor and producer has been making all the right moves both behind the scenes and in the public eye, and given that he’s been hammering home his desire to give the people exactly what they want, who’s to say it won’t become a reality once Black Adam finishes up what’s promising to be a lucrative run at the box office.
Either way, it’s become clear that the DCEU fandom is already desperate to see the harder edges of the titular antihero, whether it ends up happening on the big screen, home video, or even HBO Max.
We’ve been here before of course, with the long-running campaign to will Zack Snyder’s Justice League into existence eventually bearing dividends, and Johnson has already admitted the new Warner Bros. Discovery regime is a lot more open to suggestion than their predecessors. Fingers crossed, then, because if an R-rated Black Adam does exist, hopefully it won’t rake five years to drop.