'The Rock' barges into Venice Film Festival for wrestling drama

Venice: Dwayne The Rock Johnson was set to thunder into the Venice Film Festival on Monday, with the wrestler actor appearing in a tailor made role...

Venice: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was set to thunder into the Venice Film Festival on Monday, with the wrestler-actor appearing in a tailor-made role in Benny Safdie's latest movie "The Smashing Machine".

The 53-year-old will be the star attraction at one of Europe's most prestigious film festivals, which promotes independent arthouse movies alongside a smattering of big-budget Hollywood dramas each year.

Johnson has been cast as a wrestler in the two-hour biopic opposite Emily Blunt ("The Devil Wears Prada"), who plays his wife, for a movie that was enthusiastically hyped by Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera beforehand.

It tells the story of champion mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Mark Kerr, "a beautiful and complicated person", according to Safdie.

Elsewhere on Monday, Mona Fastvold, one half of the star writer-director couple behind Oscar-winning "The Brutalist", will showcase her new movie "The Testament of Ann Lee" about the founder of the radical "Shakers" religious sect in the 1700s.