From writer-director Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time), comes a new film about pioneering UFC Hall of Fame fighter Mark Kerr, at once high-pressure sports biography and high octane emotional spectacle, transporting viewers to the dawn of a new era as it follows the strongest fighter the sport had ever seen from the heights of fame to rock bottom and back again.
Q & A with Benny Safdie
The journey began with star Johnson watching a 2002 HBO documentary titled The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.
“I first saw the documentary in 2008 or 2009,” Johnson says, “and found myself deeply moved.” Adamant about developing the project himself, the actor-producer purchased the rights to the documentary
through his company Seven Bucks Production, founded in 2012, before reaching out to Mark Kerr himself.
The details of Kerr’s athletic career alone were fascinating enough to make a compelling sports film. Born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, to an Irish father and a Puerto Rican mother, Kerr became an NCAA Division 1 champion, winning Gold and Silver medals at the World Cup and a Silver medal at the Pan American games — all before he became an ADCC World Champion wrestler.
Johnson wanted to portray every important aspect of Kerr’s journey, including his addiction and recovery, the couple’s brutal arguments during their dark years, and the rich atmosphere and vivid details that define extreme fighting culture —an outlaw sport that was initially considered too uncouth, and violent even for countries that had been sending boxers and wrestlers to the Olympics for more than a century.
All of these elements, Johnson felt, would present an invigorating new challenge after years of focusing his acting career on action-adventure projects, including San Andreas, Rampage, Black Adam; the Jumanji series; the Fast and Furious franchise (and its spinoff Hobbes & Shaw, opposite F&F regular Jason Statham); and Jungle Cruise, the first movie project to pair Johnson with Emily Blunt.
Dwayne Johnson — fully inhabiting the man and the machine at Kerr’s fighting peak — shows how the UFC legend dominated opponents inside of the octagonal ring while battling a dependence on painkillers that nearly destroyed what he’d achieved as an athlete. The man who was born to fight is brought to the brink in his operatic, intensely devoted relationship with the love of his life, Dawn Staples-Kerr (Emily Blunt), as their arguments escalate into the kinds of fights that can be heard two houses away.
Johnson, whose own wrestling career as The Rock began after his father became one of the first Black champions in WWE history, obtained the rights to Kerr’s story and was determined to bring it to the screen. When he brought the idea for the film to Safdie, the filmmaker quickly understood that Johnson was the only living actor who could undergo the intense physical transformation required and bring to the role an intimate, lived understanding of the public highs and private lows of life in the ring.
Around this singular performance, Safdie brings to rollicking life the early, disreputable years of extreme fighting, from the small, sparsely attended venues in the American South, where Kerr first competed, to the Pride Fighting Championships in Japan, where tens of thousands of fans gathered to see their heroes face off under the bright lights.
Drawing upon a 2002 documentary about Kerr as well as interviews with other real-life fighting legends, past and present, The Smashing Machine is a devoted portrait of an individual whose strength and fame threatened to eclipse the person inside — as he fought his way to the heights of greatness and tried to keep the foundations from cracking under its weight.
The Smashing Machine is also an unconventional love story about two ferociously strong-willed individuals — Mark Kerr and Dawn Staples-Kerr — whose passion and pugnacity erupt and boil over: volcanic yet inseparable. Safdie shoots their showdowns as a verbal version of fighters in the octagon, complete with psych-outs, tactical shifts, and low blows. But, against all odds, the couple’s love for each other endures. In a viciously competitive world, the only thing they can really depend on is each other.
“When I got the call about this project it was disbelief that they were actually going to make a movie,” says Mark Kerr. “Then to add all the star power in it with Dwayne and Emily, and Benny directing it, with A24’s involvement, it was this incredible feeling of pride, gratitude and humility. This amazing cast of people were willing to take on this difficult topic, which was me at the time. In the process a movie was made, but we also made a family,”
When Safdie was completing the first draft of the screenplay the writer-director asked Emily Blunt to help him develop the Dawn Staples-Kerr character, which had not received much attention in the documentary project that inspired the film.
“People are kaleidoscopic — they’re not just one thing,” says Blunt. “Dawn was always going to be at risk of turning into ‘the athlete’s wife,’ which is an occupational hazard for actresses in sports biopics.”
Safdie and Blunt felt the documentary lacked context for why Staples-Kerr exhibited certain characteristics. “It became important to both of us that I spoke to Dawn herself, because I knew there was another version of what went down in her relationship with Mark,” says Blunt. “I felt like she deserved
a voice, so I called her and told her that I wanted to know her side and become her advocate. A lot of what happened to Dawn isn’t for the faint of heart, but I absorbed everything she told me and made sure we wove it into the film.”
Adds Koplan: “Emily brings so many layers and is so three dimensional in everything she does, in another life she could have been a detective. She had this relentless investigative energy in researching her character’s backstory and building her relationship with Mark Kerr. She helped bring a depth and
gravitas to Dawn — you can see her humanity and understand where she’s coming from.”
Benny Safdie (born February 24, 1986) is an American filmmaker, actor, and editor known for his emotionally intense, anxiety-laced storytelling and collaborations with his brother, Josh Safdie. Raised in New York City, Benny studied at Boston University’s College of Communication before co-founding Red Bucket Films. The Safdie brothers gained acclaim for directing Daddy Longlegs, Heaven Knows What, Good Time, and Uncut Gems, the latter earning them the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. Benny also co-edited their films with Ronald Bronstein and transitioned into acting with standout roles in Licorice Pizza, Oppenheimer, and the Showtime series The Curse, which he co-created with Nathan Fielder. In 2025, Benny made his solo directorial debut with The Smashing Machine, a biopic starring Dwayne Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr. Married to Ava Rawski since 2013, Benny is a father of two and continues to push boundaries in both independent and mainstream cinema.
Mark Kerr (born December 21, 1968) is a retired American wrestler and mixed martial artist whose dominance in the ring earned him the nickname “The Smashing Machine.” A native of Toledo, Ohio, Kerr was an NCAA Division I wrestling champion at Syracuse University, defeating Randy Couture in the 1992 finals. He went on to win gold and silver medals in freestyle wrestling at the World Cup and Pan American Games before transitioning to MMA. Kerr became a two-time UFC Heavyweight Tournament Champion and a PRIDE FC competitor, known for his brutal ground-and-pound style and emotional vulnerability. His struggles with addiction and identity were captured in the 2002 HBO documentary The Smashing Machine, which inspired the 2025 biopic of the same name. Outside the ring, Kerr has worked as a mentor and advocate for mental health awareness in sports, and was inducted into the ADCC Hall of Fame in 2022 for his achievements in submission wrestling.
