Dwayne Johnson's latest blockbuster is finally in theaters — and guess what? It sank like a rock. So, what went wrong with Red One?
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00:00Dwayne Johnson's latest blockbuster is finally in theaters, and guess what?
00:04It sank like a rock.
00:06Ba-boom.
00:07So, what went wrong with Red One?
00:09For decades, movies have asked a single, solemn question.
00:13What if Santa Claus was real?
00:15Tomorrow morning, 10 a.m., Santa's coming to town!
00:20SANTA!
00:21OH MY GOD!
00:22But none of those movies handled that question in quite the same way as 2024's holiday-themed
00:27action-adventure romp Red One.
00:29The film sees Santa kidnapped after the North Pole's location is revealed by a hacker named
00:33Jack O'Malley.
00:34Enter Callum Drift, head of Santa's security force, who springs into action to rescue his
00:39boss and save Christmas.
00:42And if this all sounds a bit like the plot of that over-the-top Christmas action movie
00:45from the beginning of Scrooge, that's because it basically is.
00:50It's Lee Majors, the six-million-dollar man!
00:56Red One takes viewers on a wild ride that also involves an anthropomorphic polar bear,
01:00a monstrous snowman army, and other holiday-based figures of Eastern folklore, such as Krampus
01:06and Greedler.
01:07Amazon MGM bet big on Red One, as did Dwayne Johnson, who not only starred in the movie,
01:12but also produced it.
01:14It certainly had to do well to recoup a reported $250 million production budget, not including
01:20marketing costs.
01:21Sadly, Red One's opening weekend fell well short of expectations.
01:24The movie made just $32 million in the U.S. and $51 million internationally.
01:30It's easy to see past holiday hits as proof that Christmas movies automatically equal
01:34box office gold.
01:35Truth is, though, it's been close to 20 years since the last time a new, entirely original
01:40Christmas movie released to theaters really scored big at the box office.
01:44Over the last couple of decades, most holiday films have entered the realm of made-for-TV
01:48movies and streaming originals.
01:50One notable outlier was 2018's The Grinch, which is actually the current record holder
01:54for highest-grossing Christmas movie of all time worldwide.
01:57But it also happens to be based on one of the most iconic Christmas characters in history,
02:02and taking an original story to those heights is no easy task.
02:05Indeed, the last truly successful and truly original Christmas movie was Elf in 2003,
02:11and even that movie's global take of $229 million would have been considered a flop
02:16for a movie as expensive as Red One.
02:19For a few years, almost anything that was released to theaters that was even remotely
02:23superhero-adjacent had a decent chance of being a modest box office hit, at the very
02:28least.
02:29I can do this all day.
02:31Yeah, I know, I know.
02:33But that bubble was bound to burst eventually, and people soon began to whisper of the much-feared
02:38phenomenon known as superhero fatigue.
02:40In 2023, even the Marvel Cinematic Universe started to feel the effects of audience burnout
02:45when the Marvels became the first true MCU flop, and 2024 hasn't been much better.
02:51Sure, Deadpool and Wolverine clawed out a huge theatrical run, but this year also saw
02:56Joker-Foley-Ado fall $200 million short of even breaking even, as well as whatever the
03:01heck happened with Madame Web.
03:03And when you take on the responsibility, great power will come.
03:10It was clearly a misguided marketing decision to try to sell Red One as some sort of holiday-themed
03:14superhero movie while leaning heavily into the fact that the two leads are superhero
03:18movie alumni.
03:19Not only does this misrepresent the movie's actual story, but it seems to have really
03:23scuppered its box office chances.
03:26Audiences just aren't particularly hungry for superhero movies right now, and this sure
03:30looks like one.
03:32While Red One didn't have much in the way of opening weekend competition at the box
03:34office, there was one major small-screen event that likely kept a lot of people at home.
03:40Netflix's long-awaited live boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul finally took place
03:44on November 15th, after having previously been postponed due to Tyson's health issues.
03:50At its peak, Paul vs. Tyson had 65 million people concurrently tuned into the broadcast.
03:55That's a significant number of people who weren't at the movies on Friday night to see
03:58Red One.
03:59While Netflix may or may not have known that the fight would have ended up competing with
04:03Amazon's theatrical effort, it's quite clear who came out on top.
04:07The fact that Red One saw a 24 percent increase in sales between Friday and Saturday only
04:11seems to further reinforce the effect that Paul vs. Tyson had on the movie's box office
04:16performance.
04:17There can be no doubt that Red One was an expensive movie, being chock-full of action
04:21set pieces, computer-animated effects and characters, elaborate sets, and several big-name
04:26actors.
04:27But does it truly look like a movie that cost over $200 million to make?
04:31Not necessarily, and there's a reason for that, too.
04:33If reports are to be believed, Dwayne Johnson alone is responsible for adding at least $80
04:38million to Red One's budget.
04:40Is that funny to you?
04:41Hey, hey, hey!
04:42What are we doing here?
04:43For starters, Dwayne Johnson got a record-breaking payday with his $30 million upfront salary.
04:49That's on top of another $20 million in various back-end agreements, although if these are
04:53tied to box office benchmarks, it's not likely that he'll get the full amount.
04:57Even so, that's a sizable amount of cash spent on his involvement.
05:00And then there are the allegations that Johnson was frequently late to set, sometimes by as
05:04much as eight hours.
05:06To say nothing of the days, he never showed up.
05:08The resulting delays were said to have cost the production another $50 million.
05:12Still, it should be noted that Red One producer Hiram Garcia has denied those reports.
05:17Here's a question.
05:19Why was this movie released in theaters at all, rather than debuting on Amazon's Prime
05:23video streaming service?
05:25Streamers typically limit their theatrical releases to prestige films that might be eligible
05:29for Academy Award consideration.
05:31No offense to Red One, but it's not exactly Oscar bait.
05:34In fact, Red One was originally greenlit under the auspices of it being a streaming movie,
05:38and for most people who watched the trailer, it looked exactly like that.
05:42A decent enough movie to watch with the family because it's coming to a streaming service,
05:45but not quite worth paying movie ticket premiums to see.
05:48As it turns out, everything changed for Red One when Dwayne Johnson saw an IMAX screening
05:52of Oppenheimer, and quickly decided that his movie also deserved a huge screen treatment.
05:57This thing, Red One, on this screen, with this technology, it's gonna be game over.
06:04So even though Red One was already halfway through production as a lower-budgeted streaming
06:08movie, it had to suddenly switch gears to a theatrical release.
06:12Sure, we could applaud that ambition, but it's not like any of this showed through in
06:16the movie's trailers.
06:17Worse still, with the Amazon name attached to the movie, it's almost certain that many
06:20potential audience members will have decided to simply wait until it made its inevitable
06:24streaming debut.
06:26On paper, it would seem like Red One has two pretty impressive headliners in Dwayne Johnson
06:30and Chris Evans.
06:31But when you dig a little deeper, you'll realize that neither of them have exactly been safe
06:35bets on the big screen as of late.
06:37Evans has only one big box office hit under his belt in his post-MCU days, and that's
06:412019's Knives Out, in which he was just one part of an ensemble absolutely stacked with
06:46big names.
06:47Beyond that, he's mostly been circling streaming projects, with the exception of playing Buzz's
06:51voice in 2022's Pixar flop Lightyear.
06:54As far as box office tallies go, Evans' recent hauls have been fairly underwhelming.
06:59The same goes for Johnson, whose supposed bankability took a huge hit with the disappointing
07:03one-two punch of Jungle Cruise and Black Adam, the latter of which he really put himself
07:08out there to champion.
07:09The hierarchy of power in the DC universe is about to change."
07:14DC League of Super Pets, which starred Johnson in several roles, did fairly well, but was
07:19still considered to have grossed below expectations.
07:21The only Dwayne Johnson movies to have done well at the box office in recent memory have
07:25been sequels or adaptations, and it's been quite some time since the actor has been able
07:29to headline a brand new IP to great theatrical success.
07:33Critics and audiences don't always see eye to eye.
07:36Plenty of movies are loved by critics, but reviled by audiences, or vice versa.
07:41Certainly, bad reviews don't always mean the kiss of death for a movie's box office chances,
07:45but when it's the type of movie people might have been on the fence about, as was likely
07:48the case with Red One, bad reviews can spell disaster.
07:51As the first batch of critic reviews for Red One began to hit rotten tomatoes, it became
07:55clear that most critics weren't going to be fans of the film.
07:58The RT score started out in the 30s, and has stayed there since, currently sitting
08:02at 33 percent across over 100 reviews.
08:05The consensus reads,
08:06"...wrapped in slick packaging but wholly lacking in holiday magic, Red One is a ho-ho-hum
08:11action-adventure."
08:12Multiple critics noted the movie's palpable lack of magic, and many lambasted both the
08:16quality and the amount of CGI.
08:19Looper's own review called the movie a
08:20"...tepid action-comedy saved by Christmas cheer," on the way to a 5.5 out of 10 rating.
08:26"...that was so disturbing."
08:29Now, it's worth pointing out that the Popcorn Meter, as Rotten Tomatoes calls its cumulative
08:33audience score, rates Red One at an impressive 90 percent.
08:37So it seems that those audiences who did see the movie tended to like it.
08:40Whether that translates to a word-of-mouth box office boost over the coming weeks is
08:44hard to say.
08:45Given the impending competition, though, it doesn't look likely.
08:48Just because a movie suffers a poor opening weekend doesn't mean it's doomed at the box
08:52and a number of releases in recent years have seen sales improve as time went on.
08:56That, plus the fact that both holiday movies and family movies have the potential for extended
09:01stays in the theater, means that we might want to hold off on writing the obituary for
09:04Red One's box office run.
09:06When you consider what Red One has to face between now and the end of November in terms
09:10of box office competition, however, it seems probable that the movie has already seen its
09:14best weekend, which would mean that it's all downhill from here.
09:17The weekend of November 22nd sees a U.S. release of both Gladiator 2 and Wicked, which
09:22are projected to see domestic opening weekend tallies of at least $80 million and $100 million,
09:28respectively.
09:29Given that Red One only managed $32 million domestically in its own opening weekend, with
09:33only the weeks-old Venom The Last Dance as a serious competitor, things definitely don't
09:38look good.
09:39And there's another movie on the horizon, too.
09:41On November 27th, Disney will release Moana 2 into theaters, meaning that Dwayne Johnson
09:45will be directly competing against himself for pretty much the exact same audience he
09:49was courting with Red One.
09:51Can I get a Chihu?
09:53Given the choice between two family-friendly Dwayne Johnson fantasy adventures to see at
09:57the theater that weekend, it's hard to imagine too many families choosing Red One over Moana
10:012.
10:02There's one final problem that may have caused Red One trouble at the box office, and it
10:06all comes down to a matter of branding.
10:08When it was first revealed that Dwayne Johnson was making an action movie called Red One,
10:12many immediately wondered if it was a sequel to his 2021 Netflix film Red Notice.
10:17It wasn't just the similar titles that had people confused, either.
10:20Both movies are distributed by a streaming company.
10:23Both star Johnson, and both have him appear alongside prominent actors from comic book
10:27films.
10:28That's not to say that anyone will be mistaking Chris Evans for Ryan Reynolds, but this is
10:32the type of thing that's easy to confuse when you're taking a cursory glance at each project.
10:36Considering Red Notice did strong numbers for Netflix, you might assume that this mistaken
10:40connection to that movie could only be a good thing for Red One.
10:44But there are a few things to consider here.
10:45First, it would take a pretty remarkable streaming original movie to convince people to pay for
10:50a full-price ticket to the sequel.
10:52Second, just because someone liked Red Notice doesn't mean they'll be interested in seeing
10:55a holiday-themed, more family-focused follow-up.
10:58And sure, Red Notice has a very strong 92% popcorn meter rating, but that doesn't mean
11:03that everyone who saw it actually liked it enough to care about the sequel, or the movie
11:07they thought was the sequel.
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