The Rock still punching people, but in a suit this time in the trailer for HBO’s Ballers
Watch our WORLD PREMIERE TRAILER for our new @HBO series #BALLERS. Game chose us. And we choose to ball. Enjoy.. https://t.co/9BguZP5o1v
— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) April 10, 2015
Ballers, the show that asks, “what if Entourage was on more steroids than usual?,” recently got an HBO premiere date, presumably after series star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson invited the entire HBO programming team to a party on his boat, only to jump the speeding vessel, Evel Knievel-style, over a lava pit filled with robot sharks as the terrified executives clung to the prow, their champagne glasses flying through the air in slow motion. His techniques may be crude, but The Rock gets things done.
Now the first trailer for the show has arrived courtesy of Johnson’s Twitter account, where he debuted the video along with the classic Zen koan, “Game chose us. And we choose to ball.” Johnson stars as a retired pro football player who now wears suits and still punches people occasionally for old times’ sake. Rob Corddry, Troy Garity, and John David Washington co-star as a financial advisor, sports agent, and current pro football player, respectively.
And while The A.V. Club’s insistence on comparing this show to Entourage may seem like little more than an excuse to engage in our favorite pastime—making fun of Entourage—the trailer for Ballers bears at least a superficial resemblance to that other show about what happens when you give meatheads too much money, yachts, suits, fist bumps and all. It even uses the same song featured in the Entourage movie trailer, Yogi and Pusha T’s “Burial.” Don’t act like Vince wouldn’t have killed this role.
Ballers will debut after the season premiere of True Detective Sunday, June 21 at 10 p.m. on HBO.