Dwayne Johnson and Benny Safdie’s Lizard Music Sets Christmas 2027 Release

Christmas Day 2027 will bring one of the stranger holiday offerings in recent memory. Lizard Music, the new film from Dwayne Johnson and director Benny Safdie, opens in theaters on December 25, 2027, according to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter. Amazon MGM Studios set the date for the live-action/CGI hybrid.

A Cult Children’s Book Finally Gets Its Moment

Safdie wrote the screenplay himself, adapting Daniel Pinkwater’s novel of the same name, a 1976 children’s book with a devoted following. The story follows a boy who comes across a strange late-night broadcast of lizards playing music and is drawn into a hidden world. There he meets Chicken Man, an eccentric septuagenarian whose closest companion is a 111-year-old chicken named Claudia. Per the film’s synopsis, the pair set out with the story’s protagonist to explore a hidden society.

The material has personal meaning for the director. When the project was announced at Amazon MGM’s United Artists, Safdie said he had read the novel to his two sons and that the family was captivated by its imagination. Johnson, for his part, has said he agreed to join after hearing the director’s long pitch at a festival appearance for their previous film, telling the audience that he was in as the Chicken Man.

Five Hours in the Chair

For Johnson, the role means a total physical change. He is in his fifties and plays a man in his seventies, and he has said the transformation takes five hours in the makeup chair each day, per World of Reel. The prosthetics work comes from Kazu Hiro, the artist who also aged Tom Cruise for Digger. Set photographs taken in New York earlier this fall showed an actor few passersby would have recognized, a sharp departure from the muscular action roles that made him a star.

Safdie After The Smashing Machine

The film is Johnson and Safdie’s second together after The Smashing Machine, which Awards Radar says disappointed at the box office. That film earned Safdie a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival for his directing, which makes the choice of a gentle fantasy as his follow-up all the more interesting. His earlier work, including Uncut Gems with his brother Josh, is known for jittery, high-pressure drama. Lizard Music points in an entirely different direction, trading urban anxiety for whimsy and a child’s-eye view of the world.

Principal photography began in August, per World of Reel, and reports place the production in both New York and the Atlanta area.

The Author Behind the Book

Pinkwater is a long-time presence in children’s literature, known for comic, offbeat stories such as Fat Men from Space and The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death. His books tend to treat the odd and the ordinary with equal seriousness, a tone that matches the premise of lizards who perform music for anyone willing to tune in after midnight. That sensibility explains why Lizard Music has attracted a loyal readership across generations, and why a filmmaker like Safdie, who is comfortable with unusual characters, would see it as natural material. Adapting a book so closely tied to its author’s voice is a challenge, and the screenplay will need to preserve the humor while giving it a visual shape.

The Ensemble

The supporting cast is unusually deep for a film that is partly aimed at younger viewers. Theo Clark Leber, a young actor, plays the boy at the center of the story, and the adults around him include:

• Alicia Silverstone
• Tim Heidecker
• Arya Parvathi
• Regina Hall, who plays the friend and co-worker of Johnson’s character
• Colman Domingo
• Jeff Goldblum
• Rachel McAdams
• Andrew Dice Clay
• David Krumholtz

Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt produce for United Artists, with Safdie, Johnson and David Koplan also producing.

Up Against a Crowded Holiday Calendar

The date places the film in one of the busiest corners of the release schedule. Lizard Music lands a week after the December 17 release of Avengers: Secret Wars, Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum and The Housemaid’s Secret. Those titles are expected to dominate attention and screens in the days before Christmas, and a smaller, odder film can offer a different choice for families and moviegoers who have already seen the big releases. The Christmas Day slot has a history of rewarding films that find an audience over the long holiday stretch rather than in a single opening weekend, and a leisurely word-of-mouth run would suit a story like this one.

Why This One Is Worth Watching

The project brings together a major movie star, a respected independent filmmaker and a cult book in a way that few studio releases attempt. It also offers Johnson a chance to be seen in a new light, away from the blockbuster formula, after a dramatic performance in The Smashing Machine that drew attention for its seriousness. Whether the result is a charming family adventure or something stranger remains to be seen, but the early signs, from the cast to the creative team, suggest a film that has been made with care and a clear point of view.