Dwayne Johnson Transforms Into a 70-Year-Old Man for Lizard Music

Dwayne Johnson is nearly unrecognizable as a 70-year-old man in new set photos from Lizard Music, directed by Benny Safdie. The images, spotted in Brooklyn on Tuesday, October 20, show Johnson as the character known as “Chicken Man,” according to Variety and ComingSoon.

What the Set Photos Show

The photos show Johnson with gray hair, a scruffy gray beard and facial wrinkles created with prosthetics, wearing a tan bucket hat and coat, per ComingSoon. Khaleej Times, citing Variety, reports that he held a slice of pizza beside co-star Theo Clark Leber, who carried a large stuffed lizard. Outlook India adds that the look includes a long trench coat, a silly tie and chunky sneakers.

Taken together, the details paint a deliberately offbeat picture: an elderly eccentric in mismatched clothes, a child with an oversized toy lizard and a street in Brooklyn. Nothing in the reporting says what scene was being filmed, and the photos alone do not reveal how large Chicken Man’s role is in the story.

Five Hours in the Makeup Chair

The prosthetics are by Kazu Hiro, who also worked on Tom Cruise’s look in Digger, per ComingSoon. Johnson told Deadline at D23 in August that he has “five hours of makeup every day,” and said of the film, “Imagine Willy Wonka but from the mind of Benny Safdie,” according to Outlook India.

Kazu Hiro is among the best-known prosthetic artists in the industry, and he won an Academy Award for his work on Darkest Hour, which transformed Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill. Aging a performer by decades is one of the most demanding tasks in makeup design, because the face must still move naturally under the appliances. A daily application time of five hours, as Johnson described it, indicates how elaborate the process is and how much it adds to the length of each shooting day.

The comparison to Willy Wonka also gives a hint of tone. It suggests a whimsical but slightly strange figure at the center of the story, though Johnson did not elaborate in the cited reports, and the film’s final tone will only be clear once audiences see it.

The Book Behind the Film

Lizard Music adapts Daniel Pinkwater’s children’s book. A young boy finds strange lizard musicians on late-night TV and befriends an odd man who keeps an elderly chicken, per ComingSoon. Safdie wrote the script, per Outlook India.

Pinkwater’s novel, first published in the 1970s, has long been admired for its deadpan humor and surreal plot. It follows a boy who spends time alone and encounters stranger and stranger happenings, a structure well suited to a director who likes to blend the everyday with the unusual. Because Safdie wrote the screenplay himself, his interpretation will shape how much of the book’s oddness is preserved. The reports available do not describe any departures from the source material.

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A Cast Built for the Offbeat

The cast includes Rachel McAdams, Colman Domingo, Jeff Goldblum, Alicia Silverstone, Regina Hall, David Krumholtz and Tim Heidecker, with Theo Clark Leber as the boy. Amazon MGM Studios releases the film through United Artists, with Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt producing. It is scheduled for theaters on December 25, 2027.

The ensemble mixes dramatic actors, comedians and cult favorites, a combination that matches the book’s unusual mood. Goldblum, Heidecker and Krumholtz in particular are known for quirky, comedic work, while McAdams and Domingo have a record in more varied drama. The reports do not say who is playing which role, so the size and nature of each part remain unknown.

The Christmas Day 2027 release date places the film in a traditional holiday window, more than a year away. Amazon MGM has not announced a trailer or marketing plan in the sources cited here.

A Second Collaboration With Safdie

Johnson reunites with Safdie, who directed him in The Smashing Machine. At the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025, Johnson said Safdie pitched him the film and that after about 45 minutes he told the director, “I am your Chicken Man.” He also said he had already lost much of the 30 pounds of muscle he gained for The Smashing Machine, per Variety.

The Smashing Machine cast Johnson as the mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr and was widely noted as a dramatic departure from his blockbuster persona. Safdie, who previously made Uncut Gems with his brother Josh, is known for intense, character-driven films, and Lizard Music applies that sensibility to a children’s story. For Johnson, the move from a muscular sports drama to a heavily made-up elderly eccentric continues a run of choices that stretch his public image.

The physical contrast is stark. Gaining 30 pounds of muscle for one film and then losing much of it to portray a septuagenarian for the next shows the degree to which both the actor and the director are building their collaboration around transformation.

Set Photos as Early Publicity

Images like these often serve as an informal first look at a film long before any official material appears. Because the photos were taken in public in Brooklyn, they reached fans without a studio release, and the dramatic change in Johnson’s appearance is the kind of detail that spreads quickly. Studios tend to welcome that attention, though neither Amazon MGM nor the filmmakers are quoted in the cited coverage about the photos.

The response also shows how closely audiences follow Johnson’s career choices. His fame means any visible shift in persona draws interest, and a look this far from his usual image invites questions about the film’s style. Those questions will remain open until Amazon MGM releases official footage.

What Is Still Unknown

Plot specifics, the extent of the lizard music itself and the film’s overall tone have not been shared beyond the book’s premise and Johnson’s brief comments. The photos, which came from a public street in Brooklyn, offer a first impression but not a full picture. More information is likely to emerge as the production continues and, eventually, in trailers.

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