Dwayne Johnson may be well known for playing a law enforcement officer in The Fast and the Furious franchise, but he had brushes with the law as a youth. Now, the action star’s background is serving as inspiration for a new documentary, HBO announced Wednesday. The premium network has teamed up with Johnson on Rock and a Hard Place, which will center on participants in a youth prison boot camp.
The actor shared the news on Instagram, calling Rock and a Hard Place “powerful documentary that’ll hit you to the core.” The film will look at the Miami-Dade County Corrections & Rehabilitation Boot Camp Program, one of the most successful in the world, according to Johnson, who highlighted the fact that the program has just a 9 percent recidivism rate compared to a national prison recidivism rate of over 70 percent.
The focus of the documentary will be a group of incarcerated young people embarking on the grueling six-month program. Viewers will get to see how the program works, including through Johnson’s eyes when he visits facility.
“The moment I stepped inside, spent time with and spoke to these incarcerated young men, I felt in my heart the world should see their struggle and hopefully witness their triumph,” he wrote. “I was arrested multiple times starting at the age of 13. I was once in their shoes, but I changed and I know some of these young men can too.”
Rock and a Hard Place will clearly be very different from Johnson’s other HBO project, the comedy Ballers. He’ll executive produce alongside his Seven Bucks production partner, Dany Garcia, along with 44 Blue Productions’ Rasha Drachkovitch, HBO’s Sheila Nevins, and filmmakers Matthew O’Neill and Jon Alpert. Jacqueline Glover is supervising producer.
Rock and a Hard Place is set to debut on HBO in May.
