Box Office: Why 'Red One' is Still Another Big Miss For Dwayne Johnson
Theaters were presumably happy with a jolt of post-Election Day and pre-"Glicked" revenue, but Amazon's Christmas comedy will mark The Rock's lowest-grossing star vehicle in almost a decade
In a skewed irony, the one comparative whiff amid an otherwise “everybody wins” holiday weekend was the one movie specifically about the Christmas season. Amazon MGM Studios’ Red One earned just $258,000 in its seventh weekend, dropping 83% and sealing its fate as an under-$100 million domestic earner. Theaters arguably didn’t mind, as the all-quadrant holiday action-comedy provided a jolt of multiplex revenue while the rest of the industry was nervous about releasing a biggie before and after Election Day. While the film’s $250 million budget was partially due to that “priced for streaming” variable (the A-list talent gets paid upfront without back-end, box office-based bonuses), its likely $98 million domestic and $185 million global totals still rank among Dwayne Johnson’s lowest for his most expensive film, at least since he was officially proclaimed a movie star.
The Jake Kasdan-directed holiday romp debuted on Prime Video on December 12, shy of a month after its domestic theatrical debut. The Chris Evans and J.K. Simmons-starring picture opened with $36 million in North America in 4,032 theaters on November 15. After holding firm amid normal levels of theatrical decline for its first 31 days, including solid legs around Thanksgiving, it dropped from 3,003 screens on December 13 to 2,002 screens on December 20 (amid the opening weekends of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Mufasa: The Lion King) and then fell to just 565 theaters last weekend. As usual, the arguable box office culprits were screen bleed and demographically friendly competition. While longer theatrical windows are ideal, it’s not like Amazon wouldn’t have this film on Prime for the holiday break.
It will earn around 97% of its domestic total by day 38, not far off from the standard 85-95% for all the leggiest theatrical releases. That it ended up under $100 million domestically is less of a concern than its abysmal overseas grosses. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery, the non-domestic marketplaces have delivered $88 million since November 7. You can chalk some of that up to Christmas-centric films often skewing domestic (everything from Home Alone to The Polar Express to The Grinch in 2000 and The Grinch in 2018) and the lack of the key overseas marketplace (China, natch) where Johnson’s 2010 run often got a boost. Yet even by the most generous metrics, if Red One were a mid-2010s Dwayne Johnson vehicle that cost $80-$130 million, it still would have been a rate-of-return disaster.