He made his first movie appearance in All About the Benjamins, in 2002 as a cameo. In the same year, Bow Wow made his debut as the lead role in, Like Mike. He later began to undertake lead roles in movies such as Johnson Family Vacation in 2004, and Roll Bounce, in 2005. He played as a supporting role in the film, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in 2006.

His next few movies were Hurricane Season (2009), Lottery Ticket (2010), The Family Tree (2011), Madea's Big Happy Family (2011), Allegiance (2012), and Scary Movie 5 (2013).

In 2015, he landed a supporting character role in the CSI spinoff series CSI: Cyber. Starting in 2017, he was a regular in the reality series Growing Up Hip Hop: Atlanta.

In 2021, he reprised his role as Twinkie in the Fast & Furious sequel F9.