31 May – Actor Dwayne Douglas Johnson, or more familiar to most of us as The Rock, has confirmed that he is up to star in an upcoming movie adaptation of "Doc Savage". The 44-year-old is set to portray the titular Doc himself, according to a long post on The Rock's own Instagram account. "It's OFFICIAL: For all comic book fans you already know the world's first superhero (pre-dating Superman) is the "Man of Bronze" himself Clark "Doc" Savage," the actor posted. His post also mentioned how the character was the inspiration for Superman, which is undoubtedly the more commercialised of the two but actually debuted in 1938, five years after the first Doc Savage Magazine was published. While possessing no superpower per se, the heroic-adventure character's mind and body were trained to near-superhuman abilities by his father and a team of scientists.
Previously, there had been numerous attempts to bring Doc Savage to the silver screen. However, most of the projects were never realised due to the poor reception of the first movie, 1975 "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze". Talks of a reboot directed by Shane Black have been circulating since 2010. In March this year, the "Iron Man III" director revealed to Thrillist that he was eyeing Dwayne Johnson for the role. Now that the actor is onboard, looks like the production may finally move on to the filming stage. Though finding an empty slot on The Rock's schedule any time soon might be tricky since the actor is already signed on to several movies such as "Fast and Furious 8", "Baywatch" and "Jumanji". There'll be no shortage of the professional wrestler-turned-actor on the big screen for next few years. Coming soon this year will be his "Central Intelligence" and "Moana" movies.