Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is attached to star in the MGM film project SEAL Team 666, based on the novel of the same name, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Rock is also set to executive-produce the film, which is about Navy SEALs who vanquish demons and other world-ending supernatural forces. Anyone who knows anything about The Rock will not be surprised to learn he’s attached to star in this. And SEAL Team 666 author Weston Ochse—a fantasy-action writer who is also an intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency—is pleased with the casting decision.
“The Rock is a great, great actor to portray the lead,” Ochse tells Mother Jones. “I’ve probably seen every movie he’s ever made. I saw Pain & Gain a couple weeks ago…He was the best actor in the movie, I thought.”
Ochse has been a staff officer for the DIA for nearly a decade, and recently returned from a six-month deployment to Afghanistan, where he taught military intelligence techniques at International Security Assistance Force headquarters. He says his friends at the DIA support his literary moonlighting. “My writing, this isn’t War and Peace,” he says. “It’s escapist fiction.”
Prior to his time at the agency, Ochse spent 20 years in the US Army, and was involved in special operations. “It really got me into a lot of countries,” he says. “I’ve been in more than 50 countries. I’ve been able to see different people, breathe foreign air…[My time in special ops] really fulfilled me as a person.”
Nowadays, Ochse, who lives in Sierra Vista, Arizona, is devoting his spare time to penning more novels, including a third entry in the SEAL Team 666 series. (His top writing influences are P. F. Kluge, Richard Adams, Richard Ford, Ernest Hemingway, and Quentin Tarantino.) The upcoming film (which does not have a director at this time) was written by Evan Spiliotopoulos; Ochse has yet to be creatively involved with the production. “If they want me to help, I’d love to,” he says.
