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Exclusive: Dwayne Johnson on Michael Bay's Pain and Gain

Source: Edward Douglas

April 24, 2012

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was in Las Vegas this week to take part in Paramount's CinemaCon presentation and help them to pimp G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and ComingSoon.net had a chance to catch up with him on the red carpet before he was presented with CinemaCon's "Action Star of the Decade" award.

The last time we spoke to Johnson at Toy Fair in New York, he had just signed onto Michael Bay's Pain and Gain. The film is based on the true story of the "Sun Gym Gang," a pair of bodybuilders named Daniel Lugo and Adrien Doorbal, who led an extortion and kidnapping plot before being arrested. Johnson is playing Paul Doyle, a barman who got caught up in his friend's plans.

Said to have a modest $20 million budget, which would have to make it Michael Bay's lowest budget movie to date, we asked Johnson whether this would indeed be Michael Bay's "smaller movie" and he gave us a pretty awesome quote why we probably should be more excited about this movie than we may have been before.

"It's a smaller-scale movie, not only for Michael Bay, but it's a smaller movie, but also keep in mind that 'Pain and Gain' has been Michael's passion project for years now so when someone like Michael who visually, stylistically... he's a brilliant, brilliant filmmaker, to be able to take that spirit and engage it in a passion project that he loves. I think out of that we're going to find some really special things. I have had the greatest time playing this character, because the craziest part about this is that every day when I wrap--whether it's 3:00 in the morning or 6:00 at night--I go home thinking, 'Jesus Christ, this sh*t really happened, all this crazy sh*t happened.'"

G.I. Joe: Retaliation opens everywhere on June 29, while Pain and Gain does not have a release date yet. Look for the rest of our interview with Johnson soon.

(Photo Credit: Nikki Nelson/WENN.com)

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