Dwayne Johnson’s Lizard Music transformation points to a stranger kind of fantasy
New set photographs spotlight Johnson as the Chicken Man. Benny Safdie’s adaptation begins with a child and an inexplicable late-night television broadcast.
Dwayne Johnson's latest screen transformation belongs to Lizard Music, Benny Safdie's adaptation of Daniel Pinkwater's novel. New photographs from filming in Brooklyn have drawn attention to Johnson's older appearance as the Chicken Man, a role that moves the story toward eccentric fantasy rather than the action persona many viewers associate with him.
Book cover: New York Review Books.
Variety reports that Johnson was photographed on set on October 20 with young co-star Theo Clark Leber, and identifies prosthetics artist Kazu Hiro as the creator of the look. The report describes the character as 70 years old. Those are details about a fictional performance; they are not a change in the actor's real age or a medical story.
Amazon MGM's film is listed for Christmas Day 2027. That date does not establish an Italian cinema opening on the same day; a local distributor's release announcement would need to confirm it.
The strange broadcast at the center of the premise
The NYRB edition of Pinkwater's book introduces Victor, a young television watcher whose interests include late-night movies. His ordinary viewing routine becomes a route into the unusual when lizard musicians begin appearing on his screen. The Chicken Man is part of that eccentric world.
That premise offers a more revealing introduction to the project than the transformation photograph alone. A television set is a familiar domestic object, but a broadcast that seems to arrive from somewhere inexplicable changes its role. The screen becomes a place of discovery, rather than simply a machine delivering a program selected from a menu.
It is an appealingly specific starting point for an adaptation in an era of searchable, on-demand entertainment. The dramatic question does not require explaining the book's discoveries or destinations: what happens when a child encounters something on television that the ordinary world does not seem equipped to explain?
A makeup image cannot establish the film's tone
Variety lists Rachel McAdams, Colman Domingo, David Krumholtz, Jeff Goldblum, Alicia Silverstone and Regina Hall among the cast. Johnson and Safdie previously collaborated on The Smashing Machine, but the existence of that partnership does not make Lizard Music the same kind of film.
A set photograph can establish visible costume and makeup details. It cannot show how a performance will work with editing, sound, visual effects and the rest of the cast. Describing a striking appearance is reasonable; treating it as evidence that the finished movie succeeds would go much further than the available material.
A source text that is already available
Readers do not need to wait for the film to encounter the source material. NYRB lists a 160-page paperback and an ebook edition; the cover shown here belongs to that book, rather than to an official movie poster. Its August 2017 publication date identifies this particular edition, not the forthcoming film.
The contrast with Johnson's familiar screen image is what has made the current photographs conspicuous. The more lasting attraction is the material he and Safdie are adapting: a child, an odd broadcast and a world that becomes stranger when someone pays closer attention. The challenge is to make that curiosity compelling on screen, not merely to make its best-known actor difficult to recognize.
