Whatever cracks one might wish to make at the folly of comparing intended streaming content starring Johnson and Evans to a talky, R-rated epic for adults, one should note that ahead of Red One, even Johnson’s superhero stumble still actually eked out a north of $50 million opening. So a more interesting way to consider Red One’s failures might be to note that it offers a decent glimpse behind the curtain at the actual popularity of big, pricey streaming movies when their actual appeal isn’t obscured by numbers massaged by the tech industry.
The state of moviemaking is indeed in a strange place where audiences more often than not elect to stay home than go to the cinema on any given weekend, and in that environment streaming services and their owners have the opportunity to remain opaque about what is being watched for how long and by how many people. For instance, another Johnson streaming movie that never got released into theaters, Netflix’s similarly titled Red Notice, was trumpeted by its streamer as its “most popular movie of all-time,” with the film allegedly generating 231 million views since 2021.
Yet the numbers of how many people finished the film or actually enjoyed it (or even gave it their undivided attention) are murkier. There is obviously a world of difference between turning on something that is “free” (or part of a subscription you already paid for) and leaving it on in the background while wrapping presents versus paying $10 to $20 a ticket to see the film with your family ahead of Thanksgiving. But isn’t that also kind of the point? Streaming services continue to be championed as the future of media consumption, or even cinema, and yet their seemingly algorithm-designed content with a tested movie star like Johnson and audience-favorite like Evans cannot generate as much excitement as an original (and sublime) family film, The Wild Robot, which opened at about $36 million in September.
There are of course other conventional lessons that seem gleanable from Red One’s struggles, beginning with its price tag. As of press time, it is not clear if Red One’s exorbitant budget is partially borne out from the streaming model of paying above-the-line talent expanded fees to offset the films never having the opportunity to earn backends for the talent in a traditional theatrical rollout—which is why Amazon’s adult drama Air cost a reported $90 million, even though the non-salaried portion of that production was probably a fraction of the total—or if this is just the case of another Rock movie costing north of $200 million.
According to The Wrap, though, Johnson alone demanded a $50 million payday and then allegedly caused the budget to balloon further by being chronically late to set. Producer Hiram Garcia categorically denied this allegation.
Whatever the case might be, it seems ill-advised to spend anywhere in the neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars on a Christmas movie. We’ve written before about how the industry went from reliably producing a few generally recognized Christmas favorites every decade to there not being a banner year for holiday classics since 2003. A large reason for that is the holiday movie has been surrendered to streaming services, which often treat them as disposable shovel programmer content. Conversely, attempting to rework the plot of 48 Hrs. or Lethal Weapon into a family movie with expensive talking polar bears and fist-fighting Krampuses seems equally tone deaf.