The Rock Reacts To ‘The Smashing Machine’ Box Office Disappointment: I Went To Sleep Peacefully And Woke Up Peacefully

The Rock reacts to the box office performance of ‘The Smashing Machine’.

Despite featuring a cast with names like Rock and Emily Blunt, ‘The Smashing Machine’ disappointed at the box office, recording only $11.3M domestically and $20.2M worldwide. These numbers don’t stand well against the film’s reported production budget of $50M.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter for a new interview, Rock reacted to the disappointment, saying that he wasn’t thinking about financial numbers at all.

“Smashing Machine also represents a turning point in my career that I’ve wanted for a long time: for the first time in my career — 20 plus years since The Scorpion King came out — I made a film to challenge myself and to really rip myself open and to go elsewhere and disappear and transform, and not one time did I think about box office. In our world you’re like, “Shit, how are we going to look?” And then Friday night comes and you’re like, “Oh man.” You wake up Saturday, and sometimes you wake up feeling good, and sometimes you’re like, “Oh my God, didn’t do well.” I had not thought about that at all. And even that Friday night when we opened, I went to sleep peacefully and woke up peacefully because it represented this thing. And even though we didn’t do well [at the box office], or as well as we wanted to, it was okay because it just represented the thing I did for me.”

Just a little over a month after release, the movie is already out of most theaters worldwide and is available to watch on digital platforms like Apple or Amazon.

Elsewhere in the interview, Rock revealed that he knew about Osama Bin Laden’s death before President Obama announced it in 2011. Check out his full comments on the matter by clicking here.

Special thanks to The Hollywood Reporter for the quote(s) in this interview.