A Making Of Featurette for ‘The Smashing Machine’ from Benny Safdie

“The Smashing Machine is a love letter to relationships, to the grace of winning, and the lesson of loss.” A24 has revealed a new behind-the-scenes promo featurette for The Smashing Machine, from director Benny Safdie. This time it’s just Benny’s project alone, he wrote & directed this without his brother Josh. It just premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, where it won Best Director, and hits theaters in October in just a few weeks. In The Smashing Machine, the story is focused on the “trailblazing UFC, PRIDE, and VFC fighter” Mark Kerr during the peak of his career in 2000. Detailing the good, the bad, and the ugly of his rise to the top of the sport. MMA fighter Mark Kerr struggles with addiction, winning, and love during his peak in the UFC. Starring Dwayne Johnson with impressive facial prosthetics in a powerful lead role as Kerr. Also co-starring Emily Blunt as his girlfriend, and featuring Lyndsey Gavin, Oleksandr Usyk, Ryan Bader, Satoshi Ishii; plus Bas Rutten and Stephen Quadros as themselves. Featuring authentic matches, which they show a bit of in this making of look. They’re really over-selling the “he was a tough guy that people didn’t understand” aspect of this film, which I don’t think will draw many to theaters. Thoughts? // Continue Reading ›