A Young Rock joins Regular Rock in Black Adam

By Sam Barsanti | May 2, 2021 | 10:42pm

Film Features Black Adam

A Young Rock joins Regular Rock in Black Adam

Uli Latukefu Photo: Brendon Thorne

Dwayne Johnson’s long-awaited superhero debut Black Adam already has The Rock as a guy who is basically Cool Shazam, Pierce Brosnan’s Dr. Fate, Aldis Hodge’s Hawkman, and Noah Centineo’s Atom Smasher, but now it’s getting another The Rock—or, to be more accurate, a guy who plays The Rock on TV. According to Deadline, the Black Adam movie has cast Uli Latukefu, who plays one of the Young Rocks on the generation-spanning NBC sitcom Young Rock (he’s College Football Rock). We don’t know who Latukefu is playing in Black Adam, but here’s a wild thought: Could he be… some kind of Young Black Adam? He could build a whole career on playing a younger version of Dwane Johnson in prequels to Hobbs & Shaw, Baywatch, Jumanji, The Scorpion King, G.I. Joe, and any other entertainment franchises we’re forgetting about. Rampage, Skyscraper, the upcoming Jungle Cruise. Apparently he was in a Hercules movie? That doesn’t seem right, though. We’d remember that.

Anyway, since Rampage: Origins hasn’t been made yet, you may know Latukefu from Alien: Covenant (a movie that, like Hercules, apparently did come out) and Netflix’s Marco Polo. Deadline points out that he’ll be in Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins with Michael Fassbender and Elisabeth Moss, which is about the American Somoa soccer team and its attempts to qualify for the World Cup. That kind of makes it sound like Latukefu has been doing fine without resorting to constantly playing younger versions of Dwayne Johnson, so maybe he shouldn’t take our career advice. (Then again, Baywatch: The Beginning would be pretty cool.)