Dwayne Johnson is coming back to the small screen with Young Rock.
In 2005, fans fell in love with the series Everybody Hates Chris, which was a fictionalized version of the childhood of Chris Rock.
That series had Chris Rock bookend the episodes with a voice-over before heading to the main series, which starred Tyler James Williams as a young Chris, trying to make it through life.
Now, another Rock is coming to the small screen with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Young Rock, and the setup is almost identical to Everybody Hates Chris.
Here is everything we know so far about Young Rock Season 1.
This article provides everything that is known about Young Rock Season 1 and all related news. As such, this article will be updated over time with news, rumors, and analysis. Meanwhile, let’s dig down into what is known so far.
What is Season 1 of Young Rock about?
In January 2020, the word broke that a series exploring the childhood of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was coming to NBC.
Johnson, who made his name as The Rock in WWE before moving on to becoming one of Hollywood’s most successful leading men, serves as the series’s executive producer.
Young Rock will cover the school years of Johnson and his early wrestling career, as the series will bounce around in timeframes of The Rock’s life.
Johnson was the son of a professional wrestler named Rocky Johnson and the grandson of a wrestling legend in Peter Maivia. This made him part of the Samoa Dynasty in wrestling.
However, his road there was not easy as he had to fight for everything he got, found himself on the wrong side of the law as a teenager, and eventually lived out of his car before he finally made his way to WWE and superstardom.
There is a lot here to love when it comes to filling up a television series.
Nanatchka Khan and Jeff Chiang serve as executive producers after making the series Fresh Off the Boat, based on the true-life of Eddie Huang, so they have experience in this sort of comedic storytelling.
“When myself and Nanatchka and our Seven Bucks team pitched our friends at NBC, all jaws were dropped. All hands were raised,” Johnson said. “They said, ‘We are in 100-percent. You’re not allowed to take pitches anywhere else. Take this off the table.’”
Unlike Everybody Hates Chris, Johnson will not just provide voice over and disappear. Johnson said he would be in every episode and said the way he will be weaved into each episode is “pretty cool.”
This also doesn’t appear to be like Everybody Hates Chris, with the childhood years. It seems this series is going older, more along the time where Johnson was trying to make it in the world as a young adult.
“We’re going to find Young Rock, for example, wreaking havoc in the streets of Hawaii when I was a very young teenager, getting arrested seemingly every single week, doing a lot of things I shouldn’t have been doing,” Johnson said.
“Still a good kid. Then from there, of course, we were evicted off the island and forced to leave the island and move to, of all places, Nashville, TN, where again I continued to get in trouble.”
“Then we go into my high school years and then onto Young Rock as a University of Miami football star if you will until I got beat out of my position by a guy by the name of Warren Sapp who just happened to go on to become one of the greatest defensive tackles of all time.”
Johnson also said to expect some famous people to appear, at least played by other actors. Johnson mentions names like Andre the Giant, Muhammad Ali, and Ronald Reagan as examples.
As for his wrestling career, Johnson said this is about the young Rock and not the Rock from WWE. This means the days where he was working on the independent scene for $40 a show.
Release date latest: When does Young Rock Season 1 come out?
Young Rock will not premiere this fall season on NBC. Instead, it is set to hit sometime in January 2021.
We will update this page when the official date is released.
Young Rock Season 1 cast updates
Of course, Dwayne Johnson will be in the series. The Rock announced who will play him in a series of Instagram posts.
Adrian Groulx will play The Rock at the age of 10.
Bradley Constant will play The Rock at the age of 15.
Uli Latukefu will play The Rock from the ages of 18-20.
Other castmembers include Stacey Leilua as his mother Ata, Joseph Lee Anderson as his father Rocky, and Ana Tuisila as his maternal grandmother Lia Maivia.
NBC has yet to announce when Young Rock Season 1 will premiere.