A photo of Dwayne Johnson that went viral on X this week has left fans worried about his health, but turns out the image isn’t real.
A picture that appeared to show 54-year-old Dwayne Johnson at an event with a much smaller frame than fans are used to went viral.
It was shared with the caption: “Nobody panic, but those shoulders used to have their own zip code. What happened to Dwayne Johnson??” The post collected more than 4 million views.
“Bro went from The Rock to just Dwayne, what’s going on?” one user wrote. Another joked, “From The Rock to The Pebble.” Others sounded genuinely worried: “He looks sick,” one said, and another added, “Hope he is alright!”
The truth behind the photo
The image was edited from an older picture of Johnson taken at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on April 11, 2024, where he spoke at a Walt Disney Studios presentation in a white tank top.
A Community Note on the post called it “100% AI edited” and pointed to his much bulkier build at the event, four days after WrestleMania XL.
Johnson has, however, really has changed his look in reality as well – for a movie. He was photographed on October 20 on the Coney Island, Brooklyn set of Lizard Music, almost unrecognizable as a 70-something character called the Chicken Man, in a bucket hat, a coat and a gray beard.
The prosthetics were made by Kazu Hiro, the Oscar-winning artist who turned Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill and also worked on The Smashing Machine. Johnson told Deadline in August that the makeup takes about five hours a day.
He said he’d slim down
Johnson said at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival that he planned to lose more weight for the role, and he told the audience he shed 30 pounds of muscle to play the Chicken Man, Variety reported. It isn’t the first time his shape has caused speculation. He also slimmed down for The Smashing Machine, in which he played MMA pioneer Mark Kerr.
Lizard Music is based on Daniel Pinkwater’s 1976 children’s novel. Its official logline follows a boy who stumbles on strange lizard musicians on late-night TV and befriends a peculiar man with an elderly chicken.
Benny Safdie, who directed The Smashing Machine, is behind the camera, and Theo Clark Leber and Tim Heidecker are among the cast. Johnson has said it took only about 45 minutes of Safdie’s pitch for him to say, “I am your Chicken Man.” The film is due on Christmas Day 2027 from Amazon MGM Studios.
Read more:
