Dwayne Johnson’s Most Overlooked Action Comedy Finally Streams on Prime Video
Break out the red swimsuits: Dwayne Johnson’s 2017 action comedy Baywatch is arriving on Prime Video, with Alexandra Daddario, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Zac Efron, and Kelly Rohrbach in a splashy reboot of the iconic 1989 lifeguard series.
File this under: movies we all saw coming back around. Dwayne Johnson and his extremely tan squad are bringing the 2017 Baywatch movie to Prime Video just in time for holiday couch time. Yes, the one based on the 1989 slow-mo lifeguard institution. Yes, the one with the surprisingly aggressive drug plot. That one.
The basics
- Streaming date: November 9, 2025 on Prime Video
- Director: Seth Gordon
- Main cast: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Kelly Rohrbach
- Source material: the 1989 TV series Baywatch
- Premise: Johnson plays Mitch Buchannon, who leads a team of lifeguards that, somehow, ends up dismantling a drug operation
Baywatch first hit theaters in May 2017 and quickly became one of those summer movies everyone had an opinion about. It opened with $18 million, cost about $69 million to make, and topped out at $177 million worldwide. On paper, that sounds okay; in practice, it was widely treated like a wipeout with critics and at the box office. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, it sits at 18% on the Tomatometer and 55% with audiences. Not exactly a victory lap.
That said, some movies have a second life on streaming, and Baywatch is tailor-made for the category: glossy, loud, and extremely easy to let autoplay the next scene. Prime Video is clearly hoping it plays better in your living room than it did in theaters.
Back when it came out, there was immediate chatter about a sequel. Producer Beau Flynn even laid out the early plan in 2017, telling Variety they already had a concept, wanted to bring back the original writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, and expected the core cast to return. The idea was to change up the setting and go bigger.
"We have an amazing story already. Dwayne would be in... We have a really cool idea to put them in this whole new world. We would take it overseas."
Since then? Crickets. No real updates, no greenlight. If that sequel is ever going to happen, it is still very much stuck on the shore.
Bottom line: if you missed Baywatch the first time or want to revisit the overly jacked, hyper-glossy lifeguard saga, it hits Prime Video on November 9. It may not be good, but it is definitely... something. And sometimes that is exactly the holiday vibe.