'Rampage' Photo: Dwayne Johnson As Animal Lover Davis Okoye
Brad Peyton (San Andreas) has started shooting his adaptation of Rampage, based on Midway's classic and repetitive 1986 video arcade game. Since the game is only about monsters wreaking havoc on buildings, the movie gives Peyton and the screenwriters, including Carlton Cuse (Bates Motel), the freedom to tell the story they want to tell.
The other day, some plot details were leaked, which explained the overall premise of the film. They were fairly run-of-the-mill plot points, what you'd expect from an adaptation of a game without a story. Now, Warner Bros. has released an official synopsis, which has a bit more info on the plot, and the film's star, Dwayne Johnson, shared a photo from the set.
Reed has previously said he's aiming to make a popcorn movie "a lot more emotional, a lot scarier and a lot more real than you'd expect." As a giant lizard, ape, and wolf bulldoze their way through America, a man, Davis Okoye (Johnson), searches for George, the silverback gorilla who gets turned into one big, angry monster.
Playing George, via motion-capture, is 6'9 actor Jason Liles. You probably saw his incredible physicality in The Conjuring 2, in which he played the Crooked Man. Johnson shared this photo of the two of them on set on his often motivational Instagram account.
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In the Rampage games, George is usually the leader of the wrecking crew. He doesn't have much of a backstory, as you'd expect. In the first two games, he was a man mutated into a gigantic ape. That little detail is a joke in the arcade game, where George turns into a naked human when defeated – a sight gag probably not in the movie.There's already more to the character in this plot synopsis than there is in the original game:
Primatologist Davis Okoye (Johnson), a man who keeps people at a distance, shares an unshakable bond with George, the extraordinarily intelligent, silverback gorilla who has been in his care since birth. But a rogue genetic experiment gone awry transforms this gentle ape into a raging monster. To make matters worse, it's soon discovered there are other similarly altered alpha predators. As these newly created monsters tear across North America, destroying everything in their path, Okoye teams with a discredited genetic engineer (Naomie Harris) to secure an antidote, fighting his way through an ever-changing battlefield, not only to halt a global catastrophe but to save the fearsome creature that was once his friend.
If Rampage was starring anyone other than Johnson, I'm not sure how much hope we'd have for this video game adaptation. Based on a thin arcade game or not, he's somebody we want to see in a big disaster movie, staring up at a gigantic wolf and alligator. The charismatic actor trying to save his massive best pal from destroying Chicago and getting killed actually doesn't sound like a bad way to kick off next summer.
Rampage co-stars Joe Manganiello (Magic Mike XXL), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead), Malin Akerman (Watchmen), Jake Lacey (Carol), Marley Shelton (Grindhouse), and P.J. Byrne (Big Little Lies). The film will hit theaters on April 20, 2018.