Amazon MGM Studios‘ Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans Christmas action movie, Red One, is crossing $100M at the global box office tomorrow.
The movie after coming in under weekend expectations in U.S./Canada box with $32.1M, posted a solid Tuesday of $3.1M, +87% over Monday’s $1.66M. That Tuesday take isn’t that far from what Johnson’s Rampage did on its first Tuesday –$3.4M– however, that movie crossed $100M stateside on a very long theatrical window. Tuesday’s take for Red One was also ahead of IF‘s $2.86M Tuesday. Wednesday saw $1.4M with today expected to gross $1.2M. The current running overseas cume on the $200M-$250M movie, is $55M, those offshore territories handled by Warner Bros. Originally, Amazon greenlit the movie as a streaming title before pivoting to a big screen release. Insiders at Amazon have told us that if Red One can make back its global P&A costs of $100M, then it’s a win for the shopping and streaming site.
Red One will certainly face headwinds this weekend at theaters with the openings of Universal’s Wicked Part One starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, as well as Paramount’s Ridley Scott directed, Paul Mescal starring Gladiator II. Wicked has already held Monday and Wednesday fan screenings. Wicked could do $130M-$150M in its domestic opening weekend, while Gladiator II is looking at $60M+. Presales for Wicked two days ago were at a massive $30M, we heard. The hope is for Red One to ease -55% in weekend 2, or $14.4M.
Red One received an A- CinemaScore, which bodes well for its playability despite getting punched by critics. Christmas movies pre-Covid can do anywhere between a 3x to 5x multiple off their box office openings. However, that’s when they didn’t have a streaming window to look forward to.
Polar Express, which was deemed a bomb when it was released in 2004 with a $23.2M opening off its $170M production cost, wound up doing a massive 7x multiple off its stateside start with a domestic tally of $162.7M in its first run off an A+ CinemaScore. The Robert Zemeckis directed, Tom Hanks CGI animated movie continued to gross another $26.8M in theatrical re-releases for a lifetime cume in U.S./Canada of $189.5M. The global on the feature take of the Chris Van Allsburg children’s book stands at $318.3M with tens of millions more made since in the movie’s downstream linear TV and streaming revenues. When it was released, Polar Express was dinged by critics for its avant garde mo-cap animation, which they deemed eerie. Decades later, many aren’t freaked out.