‘Red One’ With Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans Sees $3.7M Previews

The very expensive but typically priced Dwayne Johnson stars $200 million plus Christmas package The red one began its box office journey last night with a total of previews 3.7 million dollars. Note that the figure also includes money from a Sunday special screening. The film has been sitting idle on tracking for a while with one $30M-$35M projection to its opening frame.

At that level, it would be the biggest opening ever for a feature film production from a streamer, surpassing Apple Original Films’ Killers of the Flower Moon ($23.2m) and not including Amazon’s release of then newly acquired MGMs Creed III ($58.3 million). The red one was originally conceived as a direct-to-service Prime Video release before Amazon MGM switched to theatrical following solid test results.

Regarding preview comps, The red one is over Elementary ($2.4 million previews, $29.6 million opening)IF ($1.75M previews, 3-day $33.7M) and The wild robot ($1.95M, 3-Day $35.7M). Note that when it comes to non-IP films opening between $30M-$40M, there have only been four post-Covid: Bullet train ($30 million), M3GAN ($30.4 million), The lost city ($30.4 million) and IF ($33.7 million). In terms of non-IP films debuting to $40M-$50M post-Covid, only Jordan Peele’s No ($44.3 million).

There’s a lot to unpack here this weekend as The red onewhich was greenlit by Amazon MGM chief Jennifer Salke and shepherded by film production and development chief Julie Rapaport, is only expected to post $35 million in its opening state, give or take. Hopefully the film can overperform as there hasn’t been a major production in the market since October 25th when Venom: The Last Dance opened to $51M.

For a traditional major film studio, The red, with its expected domestic opening, is a black eye; look at what Warner Bros Discovery (market cap: $22.8 billion) had to endure with a $100 million loss. at nearly $200M price + PA Joker: Foil a Deuxwhich fell flat on its face with $206.3 million worldwide. But for Amazon (market cap: $2.1 trillion), the cost of The red one is a rounding error. Amazon MGM defends that monetization on The red one will be fully realized down the road in how it triggers other parts of the shopping conglomerate’s business and also the Prime service. That’s a tough pill for traditional movie studios, even those with streaming services, to swallow. But alas, all those box tablets from Apple with its $200 million productions have caused the tech company to rethink its film strategy. More on everything later. Amazon’s hope for this Christmas movie is that it will last for generations to come on the service as it continues to build its library. Candy Cane Lane could already be seen for Prime, and these titles, ala Netflix’s christmas chronicle, pop up on menus every holiday season.

Reviews are terrible with 34% Rotten on the Seven Bucks Production film, about the kidnapping of Santa Claus (JK Simmons) and his rescue by his security chief (Johnson), who is helped by an underground dark web hacker (Evans). Kiernan Shipka and Lucy Liu also star in this reteam between Johnson and Jumanji director Jake Kasdan. Bad reviews are par for the course on a Johnson film, which historically seems to please the masses over critics, e.g. recent RT results on Johnson’s fare as Rampage (51%), San Andreas (48%) and Black Adam (39%). Johnson has proven stronger in his CinemaScores, e.g. San Andreas and Rampage both got A-, and Black Adam a B+.

The red, of course has full command of all Imax and PLF screens.

Already, The red, via Amazon MGM Studios’ international production deal with Warner Bros, has grossed $36 million in 75 offshore territories to date. It’s not great. But remember that Christmas is not celebrated everywhere in the world.

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