One of Dwayne Johnson‘s most underrated football movies will disappear from Netflix soon. His fans have a limited time to catch an underappreciated performance by the Hollywood superstar, who pursued a professional football career in the ’90s before shifting to sports entertainment and movies.
Dwayne Johnson’s Gridiron Gang is leaving Netflix
The 2006 biographical sports drama Gridiron Gang leaves Netflix on September 1, 2026. Some of the other movies leaving the platform that day are House on Haunted Hill, the Creed films, Bad News Bears, Dracula: Untold, and Dumb and Dumber To (via What’s on Netflix).
Phil Joanou (State of Grace) directed the feature from a screenplay by Jeff Maguire (In the Line of Fire), who loosely based it on the true story of the Kilpatrick Mustangs’ 1990 season. Notably, the Kilpatrick Mustangs are the football team of Camp Kilpatrick, a juvenile detention camp in Los Angeles County, California. Johnson plays Coach Sean Porter in the movie.
The cast also includes Xzibit as Assistant Coach Malcolm Moore, Kevin Dunn as Ted Dexter, Leon Rippy as Paul Higa, Jade Yorker as Willie Weathers, Setu Taase as Junior Palaita, and Trever O’Brien as Kenny Bates.
Released on September 15, 2006, Gridiron Gang made a little over $41 million at the global box office against a $30 million production budget (via Box Office Mojo). Further, on the review aggregating site Rotten Tomatoes, the movie currently has a 44% approval rating after 101 reviews.
Nick Rogers of the Midwest Film Journal gave the movie a positive review. “Gridiron Gang constantly teeters on becoming a filmed version of a Successories calendar,” Rogers shared. “But The Rock and Joanou yank hard against Jeff Maguire’s heart-tugging dialogue and pull the movie back with gravity and grit in a way that the similarly structured Glory Road tried but couldn’t nail,” he added.
Additionally, Johnson played a football star in the 2007 family comedy The Game Plan and starred as a footballer-turned financial adviser in the HBO series Ballers.
Originally reported by Tamal Kundu for Coming Soon.
