WWE legend and 16-time World Champion John Cena spoke with ScreenCrush on a number of topics, including the challenges of making a wrestling movie.
Cena said, “Those are great questions. I think for the longest time, possibly it was just because of the misunderstanding that everyone had, or maybe the cloak of secrecy that the business itself tried to cast. I think now a lot of that cloak has been lifted. As a matter of fact, as we see more and more behind-the-scenes footage from WWE, and they’re doing more and more documentaries, I think the more information that gets out there and the more stories that the world knows, the more movie ideas are out there and the more series ideas are out there.”
On his favorite wrestling movie:
“There’s been a few that have been really good. I really did like The Wrestler. I thought it was just so sad and emotional. And I remember starting out on the independent circuit and wrestling a lot of guys who had been in the industry for a long time. That movie struck a chord on the beginnings of my career. So it allowed me to look back and romanticize a little bit of that, but also it was a very well done performance [by Mickey Rourke]. When it came out, of course, I’m in WWE, and everyone’s like “What did you think of The Wrestler?” I thought it was a sad movie. It could have been called The Rockstar or The Baseball Player, but I was so glad they chose wrestling to use as a forum to tell that story because it made a good movie about wrestling. And then with one that’s a success, people were like “Oh man, maybe we can do something with this. Iron Claw was another one that just came out, there was a really good one. There’ve been scattered ones, but gosh, what a treasure chest of stories WWE and professional wrestling is in general. So who knows? Maybe there’s a bright future there.”
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
