‘The Rock’ to Portray Kamehameha I in ‘The King’

L) Dwayne Johnson. Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi (March 14, 2013) via Flickr with CC BY-SA 2.0 license. (R) Kamehameha I (R). Public Domain via Wikipedia: Scanned from page 28 of “Hawai‘i Looking Back: An illustrated History of the Islands,” Grant, Glenn (2004), Mutual Publishing, pp. 454 from painting located at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will star as Kamehameha I in The King, Warner Brothers’ New Line Cinema production company confirmed in a recent Deadline Hollywood announcement.

The film will be directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) with the script by Oscar-nominated Randall Wallace (Braveheart).

King Kamehameha the Great is credited with unifying the Hawaiian islands under one rule.

The King is described as a sweeping historical epic that could be compared to Braveheart, and only partly because King is based on a spec written by that film’s screenwriter, Randall Wallace.

Seven Bucks Productions’ Johnson, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia are producing with FlynnPictureCo’s Beau Flynn, Zemeckis and Wallace.

The future of The King took shape in Hawai‘i when a Hawaiian kahu (priest) held a ceremony and blessed the project, Johnson, Wallace and Garcia.

Johnson’s dream was to one day play Kamehameha, according to Deadline Hollywood. Johnson has Polynesian roots in Hawai‘i, as well as in Samoa and New Zealand. Johnson spent many of his formative years in Hawai‘i before heading off to play football for the University of Miami Hurricanes and before following his father Rocky Johnson and grandfather into the wrestling ring.