Dwayne Johnson is arguably the biggest movie star in the world, but like many actors that reach his level, he does so much more than make movies. With his production company Seven Bucks, Johnson has produced many of the most recent films that he's starred in, but you'll also see Seven Bucks involved in many other productions that aren't directly related to The Rock's on-screen career. One such project is the upcoming Disney+ series, Behind the Attraction.
While Dwayne Johnson does appear in the episode of the new series dedicated to the Jungle Cruise, the one that has a movie attached to it that he's in, his primary role in the series is as a producer. And as a producer, it turns out The Rock is really good. I spoke to another of Behind the Attraction's producers, Brian Volk-Weiss, ahead of the new show, and asked what sort of skills Johnson brings to the table as a producer. Part of it, Volk-Weiss, admitted was that Dwayne Johnson has an ability many people don't to "make things happen." Johnson can handle problems with a phone call, simply because people answer the phone when The Rock calls. But that's only a small part of what makes the Jungle Cruise star a great producer. As Volk-Weiss explained...
That is probably 33% of it. That is a fact, that is a superpower that he has. The rest of it, if my math is correct the other 67%, he has a natural curiosity. He is curious about everything. And the other thing I would say about him is, he has fantastic instincts. So, like his notes, he never sent us like 1,000 notes on an episode. Somebody who sends you 50 notes, unless it’s the network, you might listen to 10 of them, maybe. Dwayne it would be like three notes, sometimes two, and they were all brilliant. We didn’t do what he said because he was Dwayne Johnson. We did what he said because his notes were brilliant and it was like, well why the hell didn’t we think of that? And that comes from his natural state of curiosity.
So many big names, from actors to directors, end up with the name "producer" on their resume. Sometimes they end up attached to so many television shows and movies that it can be hard to tell just how much they're actually involved in production, and how much it's the just the name that's doing all the work. In the case of Dwayne Johnson, not only was he truly involved in Behind the Attraction, but he had insights into the production that others simply did not have.
It would have been easy for Behind the Attraction to simply do whatever Dwayne Johnson suggested. He is, after all, Dwayne Johnson, and keeping one of the biggest stars in the world happy is probably a smart rule to have. However, it sounds like Jonson's ideas largely came from a perspective that others did not have, from questions that other people simply weren't asking.
For what it's worth, Dwayne Johnson was clearly on to something, because Behind the Attraction is a series that both hardcore and casual fans of Disneyland and Walt Disney World will love. The first five episodes launch on Disney+ July 21.
