Dwayne Johnson to produce and star in HBO pilot about athletes

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In an interesting new role for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, HBO has given a pilot order to a half-hour dramedy pilot featuring the wrestler/actor in his the first TV-starring role (provided you don't count several hundred episodes or so of WWE's Monday Night Raw and Smackdown).

Johnson will executive produce the project with Steve Levinson and Pain & Gain co-star Mark Wahlberg. Peter Berg has signed on to direct the pilot, in addition to his role as fellow executive producer, alongside with Johnson’s manager/ex-wife Dany Garcia, who runs his production company. Written by Levinson, the untitled project chronicles the lives of athletes — some retired, some still active — living in Miami, one of which will be played by Johnson. Filming is set for this fall.

Additional details via Deadline:

Johnson’s collaboration with Wahlberg and his manager/ frequent producing partner Levinson on the project, based on an idea by Levinson, stems from Johnson and Wahlberg’s work together on Michael Bay’s action movie Pain & Gain, which opened at No. 1 this past weekend. The two actors also are repped by the same agency, WME. A showrunner will be brought in soon to the project, which marks Levinson’s pilot-writing debut. He has previously co-written several episodes of HBO’s Entourage, which he also executive produced with Wahlberg. Additionally, the duo executive produce HBO’s drama series Boardwalk Empire and drama pilot The Missionary.

Johnson, who continues to appear on WWE Raw, toplines and executive produces TNT’s new reality competition show The Hero, which premieres June 6. On the big screen, he next stars in Fast & Furious 6. This is WME-repped Berg’s second HBO pilot gig. He recently signed on to direct and executive produce Damon Lindelof’s The Leftovers.