Dwayne Johnson Transforms Into Chicken Man for ‘Lizard Music’

Dwayne Johnson’s next screen transformation is moving from the gym-sized world of Mark Kerr to the decidedly stranger territory of the Chicken Man. New photos from the Brooklyn production of Lizard Music show Johnson filming as the unusual 70-year-old character at the center of director Benny Safdie’s forthcoming adaptation of Daniel Pinkwater’s children’s book.

The look is a notable departure for an actor commonly associated with physically imposing roles. Johnson appears in a tan bucket hat and coat, with a slice of pizza in hand, while young co-star Theo Clark Leber carries an oversized lizard plush. The images were taken during filming in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

Lizard Music is scheduled to open on Christmas Day 2027 through Amazon MGM Studios. Rachel McAdams, Colman Domingo, David Krumholtz, Jeff Goldblum, Alicia Silverstone and Regina Hall are also in the cast.

What Johnson is playing in Lizard Music

The movie draws from Pinkwater’s book of the same name. Its official premise follows a young boy who sees mysterious lizard musicians on late-night television and then befriends a peculiar man who has an elderly chicken. Johnson plays that man, known as the Chicken Man.

That basic setup explains why the production imagery has such a deliberately storybook-like quality: an aged, eccentric-looking adult character; a young protagonist; and a giant lizard toy that plainly connects to the film’s odd central mystery. The photos do not establish plot details beyond the material already laid out in the official logline, but they do put a tangible face to a character whose name sounds intentionally impossible to picture.

The Chicken Man is not simply Johnson in a new coat. He is an elderly character, and the production has used prosthetic makeup to age the actor substantially. Prosthetics are physical makeup appliances, commonly built from materials such as silicone or foam, that are applied to alter facial structure, skin texture, age or other visible features. They differ from a costume alone because they reshape or cover parts of the performer’s face and body rather than merely changing wardrobe.

Kazu Hiro created Johnson’s appearance for the film. Hiro also recently transformed Tom Cruise into an elderly oil baron for Digger, another example of the craft being used not as a background touch but as a defining part of a character’s on-screen identity.

A second Safdie collaboration, and a different kind of transformation

Lizard Music reunites Johnson with Safdie after 2025’s The Smashing Machine, in which Johnson played MMA figure Mark Kerr. The contrast between the two roles is sharp. Kerr is described here as a hulking mixed martial arts competitor; the Chicken Man is a 70-year-old with an elderly chicken in a surreal children’s-story adaptation.

Johnson has said he needed only around 45 minutes of convincing from Safdie before agreeing to take on Lizard Music. During a career retrospective appearance at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival, he also said he had lost 30 pounds of muscle for the part.

“I’m so excited to get a chance to hopefully transform again like I was able to do in ‘Smashing Machine,’” Johnson said, adding that the process meant “eating less chicken.”

That comment is a joke with a useful practical point underneath it. A performance transformation can involve more than makeup. In Johnson’s case, the available details indicate a combination of body change and prosthetic work. Losing muscle changes an actor’s overall silhouette, while aging makeup can change how the face reads at close range. Together, those choices aim to make the audience register the Chicken Man as a distinct character rather than simply recognize Johnson beneath an old-age application.

Why the set photos matter without revealing too much

Set photography often provides a narrow and potentially misleading glimpse of a film. A performer may be photographed between takes, holding a prop with no narrative significance or walking through a location that will be altered by editing, music and visual effects. Here, the pizza slice, the bucket hat and the lizard plush are visible pieces of the production day, not confirmation of specific scenes or story developments.

Still, the photos offer a few reliable signals. First, filming is underway in Brooklyn. Second, Leber and Johnson are working together in material that appears consistent with the young-boy-and-Chicken-Man relationship described in the premise. Third, the production has committed to a heavily aged physical design for Johnson rather than treating the character’s age as a minor detail.

That final element may be the most important one for audiences calibrating expectations. The imagery suggests that Johnson’s role is designed around character concealment and transformation, not around preserving his familiar action-star outline. It would be premature to infer the movie’s tone, scale or exact treatment of Pinkwater’s book from a few public images. But the Chicken Man’s visual concept is unmistakably eccentric, and it matches a story built around late-night lizard musicians and an unlikely friendship.

The cast around the Chicken Man

Johnson and Leber are joined by an ensemble that includes McAdams, Domingo, Krumholtz, Goldblum, Silverstone and Hall. No roles for those performers have been detailed in the information available, so it is best not to attach characters or plot functions to their names yet.

The announced lineup does, however, underline the scope of the adaptation. Rather than positioning the project as a two-person tale alone, the cast indicates that Safdie’s film has assembled a substantial group around the book’s central young protagonist and his bizarre new acquaintance. Exactly how those characters fit into the lizard-musician mystery remains to be seen.

For readers following the wider flow of film projects taking shape, there is also a separate report on Keanu Reeves’ talks to join James Wan’s The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil remake.

What is confirmed—and what is still unknown

Confirmed: Benny Safdie is directing Lizard Music.
Confirmed: The film adapts Daniel Pinkwater’s children’s book.
Confirmed: Johnson plays the 70-year-old Chicken Man and has undergone prosthetic aging for the role.
Confirmed: Kazu Hiro is responsible for Johnson’s character look.
Confirmed: Johnson, Theo Clark Leber, McAdams, Domingo, Krumholtz, Goldblum, Silverstone and Hall are part of the announced cast.
Confirmed: Amazon MGM Studios has set the film for December 25, 2027.
Not detailed: The roles of most of the supporting cast, the film’s full plot and how closely every element will follow the book.

With more than a year to go before its scheduled release, the Coney Island images are an early, intriguing checkpoint rather than a full introduction to the film. They do make one thing clear: Johnson and Safdie are pursuing another role built around visible reinvention, only this time the destination is not a fighting ring. It is the peculiar world of the Chicken Man, an elderly chicken and lizard musicians on late-night TV.