Dwayne Johnson’s ‘Red One’ Targets $30 Million Box Office Bounty
Will “Red One,” a Christmas action-comedy where Dwayne Johnson plays Santa’s head of security, bring movie theaters a box office bounty?
The film, from Amazon MGM, is targeting $30 million to $35 million from 4,032 locations in its first weekend of release. Independent tracking services are mixed, suggesting that “Red One” could earn as little as $25 million and as much as $40 million in its debut.
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Ticket sales on the higher end of that range would be decent for an original holiday film. However, “Red One” cost $250 million before accounting for global marketing efforts. So either way, the movie will need positive word-of-mouth to portend a long life in theaters and justify its cost. Of course, Amazon MGM cares about much more than box office grosses and maintains that its big-budget tentpoles don’t need to score on the big screen to be deemed a success. The streaming behemoth views movie theaters as a way to lure top talent to projects as well as generate buzz for the streaming service, Prime Video. However, viewership data from streamers aren’t reported as uniformly as box office returns, so it’s impossible to determine if the financial gamble ever pays off. In the case of “Red One,” the film was commissioned for streaming before Amazon MGM opted to bring it to theaters, so any box office returns will be a bonus for the studio and exhibitors.
“Red One” already kicked off at the international box office with a meager $26.6 million from 25,195 screens across 75 overseas markets. Warner Bros. is rolling out the film in overseas markets as part of a distribution deal with Amazon MGM.
Jake Kasdan (“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle”) directed the film, which picks up with the kidnapping of Saint Nick (J.K. Simmons), whose disappearance triggers a rescue mission led by a gruff North Pole body guard (Johnson) and a bounty hunter (Chris Evans). Critics have panned “Red One” (it generated a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes) with Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman describing the movie as having “charmless energy.” In his review, Gleiberman wrote that he’s “not sure that a Hollywood movie has ever kicked off the season with less true Christmas spirit.”
As this weekend’s only new release, “Red One” will certainly top the domestic box office over three-time champ, “Venom: The Last Dance.” Sony’s comic book sequel was No. 1 over the weekend with $15.9 million. It has grossed $114 million domestically and $393 million globally to date. Other prominent holdover titles include the Focus Features drama “Conclave,” Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s “The Wild Robot,” A24’s horror thriller “Heretic” and Lionsgate’s faith-based “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.”
After a lackluster October and soft start to November, overall box office returns remain down over 11% from 2023 and nearly 27% from 2019, according to Comscore. Attendance is expected to pick up around Thanksgiving, when a trio of blockbuster hopefuls — “Wicked,” “Gladiator II” and “Moana 2” — grace the big screen… and hopefully give movie theater owners a lot for which to be thankful.
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