Source: Tonight
By Theresa Smith
Hollywood seems to prefer casting wrestling stars in action or horror movies to making films about the sport, but they do exist. Think The Rock in The Mummy 2 and Scorpion King or André the Giant in The Princess Bride.
Sometimes the results are less than spectacular (did you honestly think Hulk Hogan’s movies were the greatest?) but the great thing about wrestling stars is they come with a ready-made, very loyal audience.
So it wasn’t such a bad business decision for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to establish a film division to expand its efforts to film.
Their first two films were shot simultaneously in 2004 – See No Evil and The Marine.
The first one is a horror slasher and was released to truly horrible reviews, but boxofficemojo.com says it cost the filmmakers $8-million (R59-million) to make and rottentomatoes
.com says they raked in about $15-million (R110,3-million) at the American box office, so you do the maths.
The second film will be released in October.
Their third film, The Condemned will feature Steven Austin (The Longest Yard, Nash Bridges) and Vinnie Jones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Gone in Sixty Seconds) and principal photography started in May this year.
That said, there are a few films which actually have wrestling as a theme, some of them not bad at all.
Here are a few worth looking out for: Beyond the Mat (1999): A documentary exploring the extremely theatrical side of the industry, in a refreshingly non-judgemental way. Spiderman (2002): The wrestling ring is where Spidey gets his name.
