The holiday movie season is officially under way, though the heavier hittiers, especially the components of #Glicked, are due later this week. For this past weekend, we got the opportunity to see a couple of box office behemoths from established franchises cavort in what can only be termed as a somewhat bizarre offering. Wikipedia tersely sums it up:
Red One is a 2024 American action-adventure Christmas fantasy comedy film directed by Jake Kasdan and written by Chris Morgan, from an original story by Hiram Garcia. The film follows the head of North Pole security (Dwayne Johnson) teaming up with a notorious hacker (Chris Evans) in order to locate a kidnapped Santa Claus (J. K. Simmons) on Christmas Eve; Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Nick Kroll, Kristofer Hivju, and Wesley Kimmel also star. The film is seen as the first of a Christmas-themed franchise, produced by Amazon MGM Studios in association with Seven Bucks Productions, Chris Morgan Productions, and The Detective Agency.[7][8
Look, I’m very partial to anyone with ties to the University of Miami, so I’m not not a fan of Johnson’s. And I do understand the theoretical desire for movies being funded by and whose primary showcasing will be a streaming service to want to have their moment in the sun with a red carpet and a live audience. When Jeff Bezos started Amazon Studios, he confessed to those who helped him build it, including Disney veteran Roy Price, that he would justify its existence they were able to win an Academy Award. The critically acclaimed MANCHESTER BY THE SEA gave him that prize, the first-evers for a streamer, in 2016, notching wins for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor Casey Affleck. And that was before he had a true trophy date to dazzle the paparazzi.
But RED ONE is hardly a critical play; indeed, even the trailer was uninspiring. It’s obvious this is neither fast nor furious, and per THE ANKLER’s snarky yet spot on Sean McNulty, it was also anything but cheap. As he wrote in yesterday’s WAKEUP WEEKEND newsletter to his subscribers:
(M)ost Christmas movies don’t come with a $250M budget, including shoot overages (but not including a hefty marketing spend)… this is a very low opening for a pic that you spent $250M on. Full stop.
And it’s not as if Johnson, as opposed to the likes of Robert DeNiro, Martin Scorcese, George Clooney and even Casey Affleck, whose track records and loyalties to theatres practically forced the hands of their business partners to open these films ahead of their platform release dates, has been so precious with his career choices of late. Heck, he attached his name and life story to as tepid and marginal an NBC sitcom as we’ve seen of late, the forgettable YOUNG ROCK.
And it’s not like other folks with his one-time theatrical stature haven’t been able to adapt to a streaming-first world. Sylvester Stallone was able to do it. Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzengger as well. And Ah-nold did the farce action comedy shtick a whole lot better in a far less competitive world, grossing $202 million with KINDERGARTEN COP back in the day. 
McNulty is willing to briefly concede that RED ONE’s ultimate fate will be determined by how many streaming hours and walled garden immersion it achieves for Prime Video. No official release date has been announced, and it doesn’t look the reviews are going to increase public demand. As Wiki has already documented, it’s about as successful in their minds as it has been in their digital wallets of the masses:
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 33% of 110 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.3/10. The website’s consensus reads: “Wrapped in slick packaging but wholly lacking in holiday magic, Red One is a ho-ho-hum action-adventure.”[34] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 34 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating “generally unfavorable” reviews.[35] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A–” on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave it a 78% overall positive score, with 57% saying they would definetly recommend it.[2]
But the last sentence of that recap is telling. What that seems to indicate is that there is somewhat of an appetite for something like this among the masses. In the comfort of their own home, without the need to buy tickets and the temptation to indugle in overpriced mozzarella sticks. And if the film hadn’t cost more than a quarter of a freaking billion dollars, it could be argued that it could be an investment spend for said desired franchise. But with this poor a start, it might take decades, if ever, for such a plan to pan out.
How ironic that the only “red one” that is likely to emerge from this will be the sea of said-colored ink it is drowning in.
Until next time…