Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson dressed up as Popeye for Halloween, and it got the world buzzing — what would the former WWE star look like as the character in live-action? Fortunately enough for us, fan art extraordinaire BossLogic went the length to use a photo of The Rock and Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place) on the set of Jungle Cruise to show us what the former could look like as the spinach-eating sailor.
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Live action #popeye looks good 👀😁 @TheRock just get @KevinHart4real to play as Wimpy 😂 pic.twitter.com/asRbQMsrIT
— BossLogic (@Bosslogic) October 13, 2018
After tweeting the edited photo of Johnson and Blunt, BossLogic went to joke that frequent Rock collaborator Kevin Hart should play long-time Popeye supporting character J. Wellington Wimpy.
Popeye was created by cartoonist E.C. Segar for inclusion in the daily Thimble Theater comic strip, first appearing on January 17, 1929. The pop culture icon continued to appear in comic strips before being adapted into animated cartoon shorts in the 1930s.
The character continued appearing in shorts before eventually being adapted to live-action in the widely-panned Popeye (1980) film starring Robin Williams in the titular role. A feature-length animated movie was previously announced in 2016 but has apparently been in development hell ever since.
The photo from the set of Jungle Cruise was taken early this year before the film wrapped production in September. According to the movie’s visual effects supervisor Jake Morrison, Jungle Cruise is essentially The Rock’s version of an Indiana Jones movie.
“I mean I’ve got to say, I’m incredibly excited about the whole thing, it’s really like Dwayne is in a new Indiana Jones film. It’s Dwayne at his best, and that is a man with some severe charisma,” Morrison said. “And then we’re putting him on this huge adventure, and they’ve just literally announced the female lead in the picture is Emily Blunt. So, we’re really excited. We start principal photography … well I’ll probably blink and we’ll be doing principal photography, but we are in prep right now. And that’s going to be a very fun film.”
Jungle Cruise is set to sail into theaters on July 24, 2020, Jungle Cruise has been described as The Rock’s version of the Indiana Jones franchise.
