Are WWE Films Good For The Talent?

A few of you may have noticed that The Call has made a minor splash at the American box office recently, becoming one of the most successful WWE studio films ever made. So far it's been a busy year for them, with THREE films released within the same month, in March, WWE studios released: Dead Man Down, The Marine 3: Homefront. Although they're certainly pushing the envelope for their films, the wrestling talent seem to be pushed further down the poster - Wade Barrett didn't even have a line. This discounts The Miz's turn as a Marine. With the exodus of using bigger, and better let's face it, talent this can only be a good thing for the superstars.

WWE Studios opened it's doors in the early 2000's, it's first feature was a documentary focused around Wrestlemania XIX called The Mania of Wrestlemania following around the wrestlers and what they go through in the week preceding Wrestlemaina, it was never a big success, as a matter of fact it was released with the Wrestlemania XIX DVD. It was a slow start, but it was a start.

The WWE then went into co-producing other studio's films, starting with their own talent The Rock's early films Welcome To The Jungle and Walking Tall, although not massive hits, for action films they were above average and paved the way for the Rock's future career.

From there on out, they released movies regularly since 2006, starting with The Marine and See No Evil without getting into a movie critique Marine is a very good action film, with an easy to follow story and Cena putting in a good performance, setting the mold for every other film he's made with WWE. It was a solid movie, now to my point. When Cena filmed Marine he took time out of the ring, under the story that he was attacked in a nightclub, and that seemed to go fine, didn't take much out of storyline's, written out, filmed the movie, returned back into a hot fued, it worked.

However recently, superstars are juggling both at once, and no matter how you look at it, it's bad news. Not only does it put superstars health at risk, it makes characters and storylines, struggle. For example, Randy Orton has recently been filming 12 Rounds: Reloaded as well as remaining in the ring. Orton in recent years has been one of the WWE's big dogs, but just recently, he's been around in 'creative has nothing for you' purgatory. This of course isn't just on the movie, it's also probably something to do with he's got nothing else really to accomplish.

So in recent times, WWE calling in the big names to star in their movies, is good on all angles really, it gives the superstars roles, however minor, as well as time to work on their ring work, and let's face it, it sells more tickets and DVD's.