The Rock just became Disney's biggest hero

Disney's D23 Expo is like the company's own in-house
version of Comic-Con: the most hardcore fans show up
to celebrate their love for the company's movies and
hear about what is in the works. As you can imagine,
it's a crowd that's very prone to getting excited — but
nothing in today's Pixar and Disney Animation
presentation made the audience explode like the
appearance of one man. A nearly mythic, transcendent
figure who will clearly become one of Disney's most
beloved heroes: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
The surprise appearance was part of the discussion of
Disney Animation's upcoming film Moana. The film
follows a young girl, named Moana, as she sails across
the Pacific Ocean — but one of the individuals she ends
up teaming up with is named Maui. No name had been
attached to that role, but after a teasing intro, in which
The Rock intoned from offstage about how the
filmmakers needed to find somebody handsome and
charming to play Maui, he bounced on stage, cellphone
in hand, taking selfies of himself with the huge crowd
behind him.
Quite simply, the crowd went insane . They cheered
louder than they had at mentions of Frozen . They
whooped wilder than they had when Star Wars and
Captain America: Civil War were briefly featured in a sizzle
reel. They clapped harder than they did when there was
mention of Toy Story 4.
Of course they did. Because it was
The Rock.
When he got into the entertainment business, Johnson
said, "I had a goal. And the goal was to be in the Disney
family." (I'd like to think another goal was breaking an
arm cast just by flexing, but the topic didn't come up.)
He then praised the filmmaker's attention to detail in
researching the cultures and traditions the film is based
upon. "I am proudly half-Samoan, and I am proudly half-
black," The Rock said, before cracking another set of
delightful jokes and introducing a clip from Moana . (His
character, while named after a demi-god, appears to be
a teenaged boy with a ridiculous sense of humor, all of
which seems tailor made for a former wrestler that's
since turned himself into one of the most well-known
movie stars in the world.)
He later trained the audience in a call-and-return
Samoan chant, because when The Rock chants, screams,
yells, claps, or laughs, the whole world does it with
him.