Last week saw the official nominations for the 98th Academy Awards revealed to the world, which brought with it, as usual, plenty of surprises. Though fans fully expected the critical love for One Battle After Another to continue at the Oscar nominations, and it did, the biggest success story was Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which officially became the most-nominated movie in Oscar history with 16 nominations (shattering the old record by two after decades). Naturally, other shocks arrived too, snubs that film fans still aren’t over and will be mad about for years, but some films also got love in unexpected ways.
Case in point, A24’s The Smashing Machine, the Dwayne Johnson-starring sports drama about the life of former MMA fighter Mark Kerr. After the film was released to good but not great reviews, and took a major box office drubbing (more on that later), the film that seemed prime for awards season after a dramatic transformation by Johnson now seemed dead on arrival. Now, the film has found itself an Academy Award nominee, but perhaps even better for the movie is that it’s finding it audience as it has immediately leaped to the #1 film streaming on HBO Max.
Dwayne Johnson’s The Smashing Machine Takes Top Spot on HBO Max
The nominations for the 98th Academy Awards were made last Thursday, and in them came the reveal that The Smashing Machine was officially an Oscar nominee. Not for Johnson’s performance or even co-star Emily Blunt, but the film had secured a well-deserved Best Makeup and Hairstyling nomination (it’s nominated alongside Frankenstein, Kokuho, Sinners, and The Ugly Stepsister), with artists Kazu Hiro, Glen Griffin, and Bjoern Rehbein sharing the nominating (Hiro has previously won two Academy Awards, putting the film on track to perhaps actually win). It’s worth noting that the make-up work in The Smashing Machine is exceptional, as it transformed Johnson’s face to more closely resemble Kerr, creating even more fidelity in the film’s already rugged look.
After that happened on Thursday, The Smashing Machine made its premiere on HBO Max on Friday, and immediately the film became a streaming success. As of this writing, The Smashing Machine remains the #1 movie on HBO Max, a position it has held since yesterday. It’s worth noting that The Smashing Machine is sitting alongside a lot of other Oscar nominees on the platform (all of which have added that distinction onto the key art on the service), but with the film being #1 it’s sitting well above Weapons, One Battle After Another, and, perhaps most surprisingly, Sinners. Not bad for a movie that was immediately labeled a flop upon release.
There’s a big, big reason why The Smashing Machine became a box office flop, though, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the film. Though the film premiered to a 71% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, reviews were quick to note Johnson’s transformative performance that went beyond just having his face changed for the role (the film was criticized for sticking a little too close to tropes of the sports-drama subgenre). No, the reason The Smashing Machine didn’t move the needle at the box office is because its October 3 release date had a surprise guest arrive as Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl premiered on the same date.
Swift’s latest movie was revealed to the world just two weeks before its premiere, giving The Smashing Machine almost no time to respond, and leaving it in the dust at the box office. Taylor Swift’s movie grossed over $34 million, while The Smashing Machine made $5.8 million. In response to the totals, Johnson took to social media to reflect, writing: “From deep in my grateful bones, thank you to everyone who has watched The Smashing Machine. In our storytelling world, you can’t control box office results — but what I realized you can control is your performance, and your commitment to completely disappear and go elsewhere. And I will always run to that opportunity.” The good news now is he has a movie nominated for an Academy Award, and people are flocking to it now that it’s on streaming.
