It’s been rough watching WWE TV struggle to find something for Charlotte Flair to do on the build to WrestleMania. Great wrestler, terrible actress, has no heat right now. I know! Let’s put her in a movie! Not only that, but a movie that most people remember for starring the most charismatic wrestler in history, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson!
Talk about a high-risk maneuver.
The multi-time champion, daughter of “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, and legit future Hall of Famer will star in a TV movie version of Walking Tall that will air on USA Network. The film is the brainchild of David Eick, an exec-producer on the Battlestar Galactica remake series.
The original 1973 Walking Tall starred Joe Don Baker and was based on real-life wrestler-turned-Tennessee lawman Buford Pusser. Flair’s role will be similar, “playing a Tucson cop who finds herself caught in a web of fraud, exploitation and murder, and is forced to go full vigilante to protect her home town from falling victim to modern corruption.”
Johnson starred in a 2004 remake and its surprising $57M box office success was a key stepping stone to his current superstar career. Two awful direct-to-video sequels followed, both starring Kevin Sorbo.
Beyond her seemingly random heel/face turns each week on WWE Monday Night Raw, Flair’s credits include an episode of Psych and the new Punky Brewster show. I do feel like this is WWE throwing her a bone because they’ve really done about all they can with her as a wrestler. She’s been at the top so much that people have stopped caring. The problem is that she can’t really act, either, so this experiment seems doomed for failure. Trust that I’ll be there watching, though, the way I do all of the WWE movies.
