Production notes

On May 26, 2016, it was announced that Legendary Entertainment had won the bidding war for a Chinese-set action adventure film, Skyscraper, in which Dwayne Johnson was set to play the lead. Rawson Marshall Thurber was attached as the film's scriptwriter, director and producer, with Beau Flynn producing the film through his Flynn Picture Company, alongside Johnson's Seven Bucks Productions, with Universal Pictures handling distribution rights. On June 22, 2017, it was reported that Neve Campbell had signed on to play the wife of Johnson's character, a role where Maggie Q, Rachel Bilson, Jaimie Alexander and Mira Sorvino were also considered. In July 2017, Chin Han and Pablo Schreiber joined the cast. In August 2017, Byron Mann, Hannah Quinlivan, Noah Taylor, and Roland Møller were added to the cast. Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture consulted the film production on the design of the fictitious 225-story megatall skyscraper, with Adrian Smith quoted as saying that "the producer wanted this to be a tower based on real possibilities". Smith advised "on issues that tall buildings face in real life and design aspects like wind behaviour, tower movement, elevator systems and how supertall towers can become cities within the tower". The architectural rendering of the skyscraper was based on Chinese inspirations, particularly a twisting dragon with a pearl in its mouth. According to the New York Post, "production designer Jim Bissell and his team researched local myths for inspiration and came upon a Chinese fable they could work with." The skyscraper is located where the real-life Hong Kong Cultural Centre is situated.

Principal photography on the film began on August 14, 2017, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Additional location shooting took place on-location in Hong Kong, including at the Cultural Centre.

During post-production, the visual effects were provided by Moving Picture Company, Method Studios, Image Engine and Industrial Light & Magic (ILM); the visuals were supervised by Craig Hammack, Jose Burgos, Bernhard Kimbacher and Jason Billington.

Skyscraper grossed $68.4 million in the United States and Canada and $236.4 million in other territories for a total worldwide gross of $304.9 million against a production budget of $125 million. In the United States and Canada, Skyscraper was released alongside the opening of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, as well as the wide expansion of Sorry to Bother You, and was initially projected to gross $32–40 million from 3,782 theaters in its opening weekend. However, after making $1.95 million during Thursday night screenings (down from the $2.4 million made by Johnson's Rampage the past April) and $9.3 million on its first day, weekend estimates were lowered to $24 million. The film ended up debuting at $24.9 million, finishing third, behind Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation and Ant-Man and the Wasp. Deadline Hollywood attributed the low figure to audiences having seen the plot before in other films and the July release date being at the height of the crowded summer movie season, as well as the possibility that filmgoers had become tired of seeing Johnson so frequently (although the site noted that 72% of people who bought tickets to Skyscraper did so because of him). In its second weekend, the film made $11.4 million and finished sixth, and in its third, made $5.4 million, finishing ninth. The film debuted at $47.7 million in China, finishing first at the country's box office and bringing the two-week global foreign total to $132.8 million. In its third weekend of international release, the film added another $17.8 million, including $7 million in China (for a running-cume of $86 million). Skyscraper concluded 2018 as the 31st-highest-grossing film of the year worldwide.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 48% of 293 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.20/10. The website's consensus reads: "Well-cast yet derivative, Skyscraper isn't exactly a towering action thriller feat, but it's solidly constructed enough to stand among the genre's more mildly diverting features." On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating to reviews, the film has a score of 51 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. Alonso Duralde of TheWrap called the film a "satisfying summer thriller," while acknowledging the familiar plot, and writing, "Skyscraper doesn't change the action-movie game the way Die Hard did, but it's a solidly entertaining summer diversion best enjoyed on the biggest theater — or even better, drive-in — screen you can find." Variety's Peter Debruge was more critical of the story but praised Johnson, saying, "This is escapism, pure and simple, and though the structure is rickety, by enlisting Johnson, Thurber ensures that his Skyscraper is built on solid Rock." Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Chris Nashawaty found the film to be a weak clone of Die Hard, giving it a "C−" rating and stating: "It's all passively watchable, but the main problem is that writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber (Central Intelligence) hasn't come up with a villain nearly as memorable as Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber. I know that comparison may seem unfair, but when you're ripping off Die Hard this shamelessly, it's kind of not."

Skyscraper won Best Summer Blockbuster Poster at the 2018 Golden Trailer Awards. At the 45th Saturn Awards, the film was nominated for Best Action or Adventure Film. Johnson received both nominations for Favorite Movie Actor and Favorite Butt-Kicker at the 2019 Kids' Choice Awards.