We’ll need to wait until October to see how much interest audiences have in a bunch of middle-aged guys putting themselves through the physical wringer in the name of our entertainment via a string of dangerous and often disgusting stunts when Jackass 4 finally arrives over a decade after the last installment, but it’s going to be the end of the line for Johnny Knoxville regardless.
The MTV show and its feature film spinoffs have always been ensemble pieces, if that’s what you could call the cast of longtime friends and daredevils, but Knoxville has been the closest thing Jackass has ever had to a leading man, so it wasn’t a surprise when he became the only member of the core crew to branch out into the world of acting.
He’s typically been reduced to supporting parts in genre films, but it’s nonetheless seen him work with some of the biggest names in the business after co-starring in Men in Black II alongside Will Smith, lending a hand to Dwayne Johnson in Walking Tall, getting on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s nerves in The Last Stand and teaming up with Jackie Chan for buddy action comedy Skiptrace, which made over $136 million in China back in 2016. Having turned 50 years old earlier this year, though, the actor admitted that Jackass 4 is the end of the line.
“You can only take so many chances before something irreversible happens. I feel like I’ve been extremely lucky to take the chances I’ve taken and still be walking around.”
That’s a completely understandable decision, because you’d have to be insane to keep wanting to do Jackass-level stunts forever, especially when Knoxville and Steve-O both ended up in the hospital on just the second day of shooting for the fourth outing, which would have only served to reinforce his resolve that this would be his final roll of the dice.