MMA legend Mark Kerr was moved to tears by his biopic, The Smashing Machine, starring The Rock.
The movie, set to hit theaters on October 3, 2025, stars The Rock as Kerr and also features Emily Blunt and Ryan Bader. Directed by Benny Safdie, it highlights Kerr’s rise in MMA, his toughest fights, and personal struggles. The film draws inspiration from the 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.
Mark Kerr recently appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet and shared his reaction to seeing his biopic for the first time. He revealed that seeing the film deeply moved him and brought him to tears. He described being surprised by the emotional depth of the film and impressed by the work of The Rock.
“Oh God, I cried. Just cried and cried. They brought me out in January, and the film was about 80% complete. My brother Michael met me out here, small little studio, it was Benny, myself and my brother, we watched it, and some of it just hit me. They didn’t tell me, ‘Hey, listen, Dwayne’s gonna do all this prosthetics.’ I didn’t see that till I was in Vancouver, and just watching how deep they got emotionally on stuff was just unbelievable.”
Mark Kerr shocked by The Rock’s incredible transformation
Mark Kerr revealed that director Benny Safdie pushed The Rock to get even bigger for the role. He recalled the first time he saw Dwayne in full prosthetics, “The running joke was that Benny is the only director in the world that looked at him and said, ‘Ah, you need to get bigger.’ The first time I ever saw him in full prosthetics, so they brought me over to Vancouver for fight week, we’re in this big venue, they’re going to film these scenes, scenes that are in Japan, and they didn’t tell me they’re going to do prosthetics.”
“They didn’t say any of this. And so I’m talking, Dwayne walks in behind me, and he’s got a blue Pride shirt. He’s got these Adidas track pants on. He’s got the shoes on I wore, he’s got my hair on, he’s got all the prosthetics on. And I turn around and I could only cuss at him. It was this whole thing of just pushing him and going, ‘F*ck you, dude.'”
“Because I didn’t realize how much time he put into [the appearance], because he goes, ‘I needed big traps and I needed big shoulders.’ Because it’s like, when you look at me back, then it’s like, I had a 25-inch neck, I had shoulders that just were on top of shoulders.”
“I looked at him. I just couldn’t believe it, like a doppelganger, he was me. Shockingly, I couldn’t process it because it was just like, Oh my God, dude, this is unbelievable, because no one said, ‘Hey, listen, we have Academy Award winning makeup and prosthetics.’ Incredible.”
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