Why Red One Absolutely Bombed At The Box Office

Plenty of movies have taken the "what if Santa Claus was real?" angle, but none have handled it the way 2024's holiday-themed action-adventure romp "Red One" does. The film imagines a world where pretty much all mythological creatures actually exist, with that delicate balance between them and regular people overseen by an organization called the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority (M.O.R.A.). 

The movie's version of Santa (J.K. Simmons) — more prone to lifting weights than eating milk and cookies — is kidnapped after the North Pole's location is revealed by a hacker named Jack O'Malley (Chris Evans). Cue Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), head of Santa's security force — who has just announced his retirement after getting sick of how long the naughty list has grown in recent years — springing into action to rescue his boss and save Christmas. "Red One" takes viewers on a wild ride that also involves an anthropomorphic polar bear, a monstrous snowman army, and other holiday-based figures of European folklore like Krampus and Grýla.

Amazon MGM Studios and Johnson himself — who is one of the movie's producers — bet big on "Red One" to bring in a massive box office haul and recoup its reported $250 million production budget plus marketing costs. But after an opening weekend that fell well short of expectations — only $32 million in the U.S. and $51 million internationally — it looks like the movie is going be added to the list of the biggest box office bombs of 2024. So what happened?

It's easy to look at holiday hits like "Home Alone," "Elf," "Love Actually," "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," and "Die Hard" — and yes, there are many details that make "Die Hard" a Christmas movie, despite the naysayers — as proof that Christmas movies automatically equal box office gold. But in fact, it's been close to 20 years since the last time a new, entirely original Christmas movie released in theaters became a big enough hit to enter anyone's annual rotation of holiday movie watching. 

Over the last couple of decades, holiday films have been more the realm of made-for-TV movies and streaming originals. A notable outlier was 2018's "The Grinch," which is actually the current record holder for highest-grossing Christmas movie of all time worldwide. But it also happens to be based on one of the most iconic Christmas stories and characters in history, so it doesn't exactly qualify as a new, entirely original Christmas movie. 

The last Christmas movie that was neither based on nor the sequel to an existing property and did strong numbers at the box office was "Elf" in 2003 — and even then, its global take of $229 million still would be considered a flop for a movie as costly as "Red One." The way things are going, "Red One" will be lucky to even reach that number.

For a few years there, almost anything released to theaters that was even remotely superhero-adjacent had a decent chance of being at least a modest box office hit. But that bubble was bound to burst eventually, and people began to talk about so-called superhero fatigue — which seemed to finally take hold in 2023. That year, even the Marvel Cinematic Universe started to feel the effects of audience burnout when "The Marvels" became the first true MCU flop. 

2024 hasn't been much better. Sure, "Deadpool & Wolverine" blew everyone away at the box office and became the latest superhero film to join the billion-dollar club. But this year also saw "Joker: Folie à Deux" fall $200 million short of even breaking even , not to mention the third "Venom" movie barely earning half in its opening weekend what its predecessor did and "Madame Web" not even being able to net $50 million domestically in its entire run.

All this means that it was an extremely misguided marketing decision to try to sell "Red One" as some sort of holiday-themed superhero outing while leaning heavily into its two main stars being superhero movie alums. Not only does that misrepresent what "Red One" actually is, but audiences don't seem particularly hungry for non-Deadpool superhero movies right now. 

While "Red One" didn't have much in the way of opening weekend competition at the box office, there was a major small screen event that most certainly kept a lot of people at home and away from the theater on the day of its release. Netflix's long-awaited live boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul finally happened on November 15, after having previously been planned for July but postponed due to health issues experienced by Tyson at the time. 

At its peak, "Paul vs. Tyson" — which consisted of not only that main event but several other matches over a period of several hours — had 65 million people concurrently tuned into the broadcast. That's definitely a not insignificant number of people who weren't at the movies on Friday night to see "Red One" or anything else. 

While Netflix couldn't have known when it first scheduled the fight that it was going to be directly competing with a theatrical effort from rival streamer Amazon, various articles published in the days that followed mentioned how the two releases ended up going head to head and that it was certainly Netflix that came out on top. The fact that "Red One" saw a 24% increase between Friday and Saturday only seemed to further reinforce the effect that "Paul vs. Tyson" had on potential ticket sales for the Christmas action extravaganza. 

"Red One" definitely looks like a fairly expensive movie, with big action set pieces, computer animated effects and characters, elaborate sets, plus several big name actors. But does it truly look like a movie that cost over $200 million to make? Not necessarily — and there's a reason for that. If reports are to be believed, Dwayne Johnson alone is responsible for adding at least $80 million to that tally.

For starters, Johnson got a record-breaking payday with his $30 million upfront salary to star in the film. That's on top of another $20 million in various backend agreements — although, if those are tied to box office benchmarks, it's not likely that he'll get the full $50 million. Even so, that's a sizable amount of cash spent on his involvement. And then there are the allegations that Johnson was frequently late to set, sometimes as much as eight hours, not to mention days he just plain never showed up. The resulting delays were said to cost the production another $50 million. It should be noted that Hiram Garcia, who conceived of the story for "Red One" and is also a producer on the film, denied those reports. 

Either way, whether Johnson added $80 million to the production's budget or only $30-$50 million, costs directly related to his involvement still made for that much higher of a financial benchmark that "Red One" had to clear to even so much as break even. 

We've mentioned already that Amazon MGM Studios is the company behind "Red One." So why did the movie get released to theaters at all rather than debuting on Amazon's own Prime Video streaming service? To be fair, there is a history of streamers putting movies in theaters either before or concurrent with their streaming release. But that is typically done with prestige films so they can be eligible for Academy Award consideration — like Apple's "CODA," Netflix's "Roma," and Amazon's own "Air." No offense to "Red One," but it's not exactly Oscar bait material.

Indeed, "Red One" was originally greenlit under the auspices of it being a streaming movie. For most people who watched the trailer, it looked exactly like that — a decent enough movie to watch with the family because it's coming to a streaming service they already subscribe to, but also a little cheap-looking and not worth paying movie ticket premiums to see. But when Dwayne Johnson saw an IMAX screening of "Oppenheimer," he decided that his movie also deserved the huge screen treatment. So even though "Red One" was already halfway through production as a lower-budgeted streaming movie, it suddenly switched gears to not only a theatrical film but one that was IMAX-ready. 

Unfortunately, those ambitions didn't really show through in the trailers for the movie. Not to mention that, with the Amazon name attached, a lot of the movie's potential audience probably decided to wait until "Red One" made its inevitable streaming debut, assuming it likely wouldn't be all that long of a wait anyway. 

On paper, it would seem like "Red One" has two pretty impressive headliners in Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans. But when you dig a little deeper, you realize that neither of them have exactly been safe bets on the big screen as of late. Evans has only one big box office hit under his belt post-Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that's 2019's "Knives Out" — in which he was part of an ensemble absolutely stacked with equally big names. Beyond that, he's been mostly circling streaming projects, with the exception of voicing the titular character in 2022's "Lightyear," which also happened to be a big flop. Not that that was Evans's fault, but it still contributed to what has been a pretty underwhelming box office tally for the actor in the last five years or so.

The same goes for Johnson, whose perceived bankability took a huge hit with the disappointing one-two punch of "Jungle Cruise" and especially "Black Adam," the latter of which he really put himself out there to champion. "DC League of Super-Pets," which saw Johnson voice several characters, did fairly well but was still considered to have grossed below expectations. The only Johnson-starring movies to do extraordinarily well at the box office in recent memory have been sequels, and it's been some time since the actor has been able to headline a brand new property to great theatrical success. Neither of the two main stars of "Red One" are the type to automatically draw a crowd unless they are playing established characters in legacy franchises. 

Critics and audiences don't always see eye to eye. This is evidenced by how many movies critics loved but audiences didn't care for, as well as all the critically hated movies that are actually awesome according to audiences. Getting critically panned isn't automatically the kiss of death for a movie's box office chances — but when it's a film people might have been on the fence about, as was likely the case with "Red One," bad reviews can contribute to empty theaters.

As the first batch of critic reviews for "Red One" began to hit Rotten Tomatoes, its score started out in the 30s and has stayed there since, currently sitting at 33% as of this writing with over 100 reviews. The consensus reads, "Wrapped in slick packaging but wholly lacking in holiday magic, 'Red One' is a ho-ho-hum action-adventure." Multiple reviewers noted the movie's lack of magic, and many were critical of both the quality and the amount of CG. Looper's own review called it a "tepid action comedy saved by Christmas cheer" while handing it a 5.5 out of 10 rating. 

It should also be noted that the Popcornmeter — which is what Rotten Tomatoes calls its cumulative audience score — rates "Red One" at an impressive 90%. So the members of the general public that have seen the movie tend to like it. Whether that'll translate to a word-of-mouth box office boost over the coming weeks is hard to say, but given the impending competition — more on that later — that doesn't look likely. 

When it was first revealed that Dwayne Johnson was making an action movie called "Red One," many immediately wondered if it was a sequel or at least otherwise connected to his 2021 Netflix film "Red Notice." It wasn't just the similar titles that had people confused, either. Both movies are distributed by a streaming company, both star Johnson, and both have Johnson appear alongside prominent actors from comic book films. Not that anyone mistakes Chris Evans for "Red Notice" co-lead Ryan Reynolds, but it's the type of thing that's easy to conflate when you are just taking a cursory glance at both projects. 

Considering "Red Notice" did strong numbers for Netflix, one might assume that this mistaken connection to that movie could only be a good thing for "Red One." But it would still take a pretty remarkable streaming original movie to make people want to go to the theater and pay for a full-price ticket to see its sequel. So that only further cemented people's decision to forgo the theater and wait until "Red One" came to streaming. Second, just because someone liked "Red Notice" doesn't mean they'd be interested in seeing a holiday-themed, more family-focused sequel. And finally, anyone who just didn't like "Red Notice" obviously wouldn't care about a sequel to it. 

Sure, "Red Notice" has a very strong 92% Popcornmeter rating, but that doesn't mean that everyone who saw it liked it that much. And with the somewhat disposable nature of streaming content, even people who watched and enjoyed "Red Notice" in 2021 don't necessarily hold any lingering fondness for it, three years later, to want to see a follow-up. 

Considering there's a long list of the highest-grossing movies to never finish No. 1 at the box office, it's obviously possible for a film to earn a sizeable amount of money over an extended period of time. That, plus the fact that both holiday movies and family films have the potential for extended stays in the theater, means we should in theory hold off on writing the box office obituary for "Red One." Especially given the overwhelmingly positive audience reaction, there is the potential for people to talk their friends into seeing the movie over the coming weeks.

However, with what "Red One" is about to face in terms of box office competition, it's extremely likely that the movie has already seen its best weekend — at least in the United States — and that it can probably expect nothing but sharp drops in ticket sales going forward. The weekend of November 22 sees the U.S. release of both "Gladiator II" and "Wicked," projected to see domestic opening weekend tallies of at least $80 million and $100 million, respectively. Given that "Red One" only managed $32 million domestically in its own opening weekend with only the three-week-old — and underperforming — "Venom: The Last Dance" as a serious competitor, it doesn't look good. 

Of course, that doesn't even mention a movie hitting theaters less than a week after those two films, on November 27: "Moana 2," which will see Dwayne Johnson directly competing against himself for pretty much the exact same audience he was courting with "Red One." When given the choice between which family-friendly Dwayne Johnson fantasy adventure to see at the theater that weekend, it's hard to imagine too many families choosing "Red One" over "Moana 2."