The murky world of inside scoops and so-called “exclusives” tends to be vague at the best of times, especially when the slice of scuttlebutt in question is often a broad, sweeping blanket statement that can’t be proven either true or false.
A case in point is the latest rumor from Giant Freakin Robot, which claims that Dwayne Johnson wanted Black Adam to come burdened with an R-rating, but Warner Bros. wouldn’t play ball. Of course, this flies in the face of other chatter from different places that offered The Rock was making the movie exactly the way he wanted and there was nothing the studio could do about it.
Looking at the facts, The Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey both flopped at the box office, so R-rated DCEU content has hardly set the world alight. On top of that, the last R-rated movie Johnson starred in was the $65 million comedy Baywatch, and before that it was Michael Bay’s $26 million crime caper Pain & Gain, which accounts for two of his last nineteen features.
In short, none of the actor’s big budget blockbusters have ever come close to sniffing an R-rating, which begs the question as to why he’d try and have Black Adam lean in that direction when he’s spent fifteen years attached to the title role, and Seven Bucks need it to earn as much money as possible to both justify the investment and launch a brand new franchise.