Movies News Talk
Red One: Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans Aim for a $36 Million Christmas Box Office Hit!
Get ready for some holiday mayhem, folks! Amazon MGM's Red One, a massive $200 million Christmas action-comedy starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Chris Evans is aiming for a big Box office win! Projections put the opening weekend at around $36 million in the U.S. and Canada when it opens on November 15th; which is great considering how other movies were previously received! This one seems well-placed for potential success!
It's interesting to note this initially started as a streaming movie before changing directions to become a big theatrical release. Amazon MGM took that huge gamble. Their confidence comes from those great test screenings! For this kind of studio deciding to move into the theater; from being developed for the streaming side means one extremely significant and crucial element which involves recouping that significant spending amount they poured into advertising alone (P&A costs). If these kinds of costs aren’t met by the actual ticket sales– there wouldn't be another attempt to produce something else with such high production standards; and that itself means Amazon sees potential that could generate great amounts of revenue; possibly becoming profitable from Box office receipts alone and then additional Streaming later on. For studios this is extremely significant. It impacts the profitability model.
Here's what's promising for Red One. It appeals to Johnson’s massive female fan base. Unaided awareness polls—where people mention movies without prompts – it has that impressive result. And teen boys? It's a top choice! It's hugely important to realize how the target demographic impacts this, because those teens alone, the total market demographic these studios rely upon can already establish its enormous success based on current trends alone. Yet we need additional insights, further comparing various aspects involved, including comparisons from other recent productions with similarly large budgets and opening week successes, highlighting just how significantly it affects various potential revenue outcomes later.
That kind of popularity with younger males sets Red One apart during this busy Thanksgiving holiday movie period! While we also need to consider the expected audience turnout for competing movies; including other potentially successful productions (Moana 2 and Wicked for the ladies; Gladiator 2 for older guys) this is still expected to result in those surprisingly large revenue outcomes. This is especially because of the recent competition which hasn’t quite met expectations and this shows another major point; success often comes down to a successful release date.
Those unaided awareness comps are quite useful, providing additional insight to compare current projections to similarly-themed films such as Shazam! (53.5M), Uncharted (44M), and Infinite (33.7M); these kinds of titles also produced successful opening revenues which already show a lot of promising details. But even more promising; in these kinds of non-IP films; those which didn’t involve those iconic or well-known brand recognition from their various prior released titles (including movies, shows or game franchises which were well-known already): Only four films post-Covid have grossed between $30-40 million; even more interesting is that these kinds of movies tend to have bigger surprises in unexpected ways which make these releases not as easy to determine based purely upon what had been developed previously and often lead to increased earnings after that initial release. A larger-scale success.
It is also very valuable to compare the production to those kinds of titles which were previously released around this time of year to see where it’s exactly positioned. It could potentially perform remarkably well. Red One is a major Christmas-themed blockbuster; something very different and highly successful in 2018–Illumination and Universal’s The Grinch (67.5M opening weekend, grossing over $272.2 million). That sets a potential precedent, even though we still can't truly know exactly what would happen. Its current market trajectory however has placed the upcoming production towards an incredibly impressive opening weekend gross. We can all clearly see that possibility now.
Consider these individual acting achievements: Johnson’s biggest non-Fast & Furious opener is Black Adam ($67M), while Evans’s biggest non-MCU/Pixar opener was Knives Out ($26.7M).
Red One is already off to a great start, attracting an enormous fan base from a wide audience and especially a very valuable younger crowd, highlighting the importance of targeting that valuable teen and younger demographics in marketing to increase revenue after opening. While competing films are around, this one appears well-positioned to be hugely successful. We will certainly want to look at what happens as the release date nears; paying more attention and carefully observing how exactly everything develops.
That $36 million projection is extremely promising; this does provide significant amounts of hope that it could possibly achieve massive Box office earnings during those key months, even despite the additional pressure and potential revenue drop that is impacted by competitive productions being released during this very significant holiday timeframe and revenue periods.