While professional wrestling has always been popular on television, the action has frequently had trouble being adapted to the big screen. However, Paramount Pictures, with some help from some folks that know a couple things about wrestling, WWE, may have stumbled on exactly what was missing from previous wrestling movies, giant animated monsters.
The first trailer for Rumble, is here, and it shows us a world where giant kaiju style creatures appear to exist alongside humans, and they engage in professional wrestling style combat sports for the enjoyment of human viewers. The good news is that the movie is clearly having as much fun with itself as that premise implies. The story follows a monster, voiced by Will Arnett, who is training to be a wrestler, and he's willing to go with some unorthodox training methods, including referencing a classic 1980s drama. Check out the first trailer below.
The trailer for Rumble is making me ask so many questions. Have monsters and humans always lived together in this world? Do monsters only wrestle or do they have, like, normal jobs too? Wait a minute, Dirty Dancing was a movie that was made in this world too? Does that mean Jerry Orbach was in it? Does that mean that Law & Order has been on TV for three decades in this world too? So many questions.
I'm guessing most, if not all of these questions will go without answers, but if the movie works well enough, we probably won't actually care. It looks like it could be funny. And since we won't be seeing Rumble for 11 months, it would seem we'll have plenty of time to find out.
While the trailer for Rumble doesn't specifically mention it, the movie is co-produced by WWE Studios, the filmmaking arm of the entertainment company that still focuses on professional wrestling. At least a couple of WWE's current stars will be making appearances in the film, including Becky Lynch and Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i, who recently appeared alongside his cousin Dwayne Johnson in Hobbs & Shaw. It's unclear if they'll be voicing humans or other monsters. The latter seems likely, as it would allow them to potentially put some of their skills on display cutting promos as professional monster wrestlers.
Professional wrestling has been the backdrop for films many times over the years, but frequently the movies, like the television shows, were based in the idea that the battles were real. Of course, the most recent example, Fighting with My Family, was the first movie to really be about the real world of professional wrestling, which might be part of the reason it's the best.
Of course, with an animated movie about monsters, the wrestling can be entirely, "real" and audiences will buy in, so this might be perfect.
It seems interesting that we're seeing the first trailer for Rumble in February when the film isn't slated to open until 2021, specifically, the movie is currently set to debut January 29, so I guess that means we have 11 months of promotion planned.
