Backing Dwayne Johnson’s $250 Million Christmas Movie ‘Red One’ Made Sense During the Streaming Wars. Now, Not So Much

variety.com:

Red One,” Dwayne Johnson’s Yuletide action extravaganza with a gargantuan $250 million budget, a sign of where the movie business is headed or a relic from its free-spending, streaming wars past?

After the movie opened last weekend in the U.S. to a less-than-festive $32 million (revised downward from an estimated $34 million on Sunday), folks close to Amazon, the e-retailer turned aspiring media giant, insisted the movie was successful.

It didn’t matter that it would take a Christmas miracle for “Red One” to ever get out of the red during its theatrical run. And who cares that “Joker: Folie à Deux” was declared a folie à dud when the Warner Bros.

sequel opened to $38 million a few weeks prior, despite costing $50 million less than “Red One.” The idea was that all of the attention surrounding the movie’s big-screen release would ensure that a vast audience tunes in when “Red One” debuts at some point on the company’s streaming service Prime Video, in turn bolstering subscribers or keeping them from shedding the service for another.