‘Red One’ Kicks Off Year-End Tentpole Parade

It’s Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans to the rescue.

That’s the hope in any case as their new Christmas movie, Red One, opens across North America this weekend after a tough fall. Tracking suggests the action-adventure movie will unpack a domestic debut in the $30 million to $35 million range for Amazon MGM Studios before enjoying a long run through the year-end holidays (fingers crossed).

However, there will be plenty of chatter about the movie’s box office performance considering it cost $250 million to make. A major legacy studio in the same situation would come under intense scrutiny if a film carrying that price tag opened to those numbers, but Amazon insists its business model is entirely different and fueled by subscribers, and not just box office. It also hopes to launch a new film franchise.

And exhibitors are certainly happy to play the first proper Christmas movie since before the pandemic when The Grinch opened in 2018, not to mention a movie with such high profile talent.

Rated PG-13, the original story follows what happens when Santa Claus — whose code name is “Red One” — is kidnapped and the North Pole’s head of security (Johnson) must team up with the world’s most infamous bounty hunter (Evans) in what Amazon MGM describes as a globe-trotting, action-packed mission to save Christmas.

Directed by Jake Kasdan from a screenplay by Chris Morgan and a story by Hiram Garcia, Red One also stars Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Kristofer Hivju, Nick Kroll, Wesley Kimmel and J.K. Simmons. It is rated PG-13 in the U.S, where reviews haven’t been kind.

Red One is the first in a series of year-end tentpoles preparing to open and, if all goes well, put the box office back on the nice list after a tough fall due to lack of product. On Nov. 22, Universal’s Wicked and Paramount’s Gladiator II both debut, followed by Walt Disney Animation’s Moana 2 on Nov. 27. (Many have dubbed the high-profile corridor “Moanapocalypse” or “Glicked.)

Amazon MGM has waged a full-fledged marketing campaign for Red One, including advertising on major sporting events, coordinating an ambitious screening series and dispatching talent to points around the globe.

The studio also did a a number of local promotions to reach multicultural audiences. Amazon collaborated with It’s Boba Time, a popular AAPI-owned boba company, in all 88 of their locations for two weeks and created a custom Red One-themed drink called the “Missing Santa.” The studio partnered with five local Black-owned coffee shops and bakeries to host free Red One drink giveaways to promote the film during opening week. Locations included Hilltop in Los Angeles and Sip and Savor in Chicago. There were also activations in 13 stores in the Los Angeles area with a popular retailer within the Latine community, Curacao.

Warner Bros. Pictures is distributing the Seven Bucks production internationally, where it opened a week early to $28 million.

Amazon gave the greenlight to make Red One before it even bought MGM. Insiders say the film’s success will be based on global box office combined with how it performs on Prime both this holiday season and for years to come. Put another way, the goal is for it to become a perennial holiday favorite.