LOS ANGELES (AP) — Moviegoers were not exactly feeling the Christmas spirit this weekend, or at least not based on their attendance at “Red One” showings.
The big budget, star-driven action comedy with Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans sold $34.1 million in tickets in its first weekend in theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday. It easily topped a box office populated mostly by holdovers.
For traditional studios, a $34.1 million debut against a $200 million-plus production budget would be a clear indication of a flop. Some even peg the budget closer to $250 million. But “Red One” is an Amazon MGM Studios release with the luxury of playing the long game rather than relying solely on global box office where Johnson tentpoles often overperform. The film may have a life on Prime Video for years to come.
“Red One,” in which Johnson plays Santa’s bodyguard, was originally built to go straight-to-streaming. It was greenlit prior to Amazon's acquisition of MGM. One interpretation of its lifecycle is that the theatrical earnings are not only just a bonus, but an additive gesture toward struggling theaters looking for a consistent stream of new films.
“Amazon has 250 million plus worldwide subscribers to the platform. It’s similar to the way Netflix, I think, looks at stuff for their platform,” said Kevin Wilson, head of distribution for Amazon MGM Studios. “There’s a there’s a massive value for a movie like this in terms of how many eyeballs you’re going to get.”
The first major studio holiday release since 2018, “Red One” opened on 4,032 screens, including IMAX and other large formats, on an otherwise quiet weekend for major releases.
“We’re really happy with the results," Wilson said. “I think when you look at the theatrical marketplace that's sometimes unforgiving, especially for original films, this is a good result for us.”
Since 2020, only seven films that weren't sequels or based on another piece of intellectual property have opened over $30 million (including “Oppenheimer” and “Nope.”)
Warner Bros. is handling the overseas release, where it has made an estimated $50 million in two weekends from 75 territories and 14,783 screens.
Still, it’s certainly not a theatrical hit in North America. Even “Joker: Folie à Deux” made slightly more in its first weekend. “Red One,” directed by Jake Kasdan and produced by Johnson’s Seven Bucks, was roundly rejected by critics, with a dismal 33% Rotten Tomatoes score. Jake Coyle, in his review for The Associated Press, wrote that it “feels like an unwanted high-priced Christmas present.”
Audiences were kinder than they were to “Joker 2,” giving it an A- CinemaScore, suggesting, perhaps, that the idea of it becoming a perennial holiday favorite is not so off-base.
“Red One” is also overperforming in the middle of the country, Wilson said, and perhaps will have a nice holdover over Thanksgiving as a different option to the behemoths on the way.
Sony's “Venom: The Last Dance” added $7.4 million this weekend's box office to take second place, bringing its domestic total to $127.6 million. Globally, its total stands at $436.1 million.
Lionsgate's “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” landed in third with $5.4 million. That much more modestly budgeted Christmas movie has already nearly doubled its $10 million production budget in two weeks. Fourth place went to A24’s Hugh Grant horror “Heretic,” with $5.2 million, bumping its total gross to $20.4 million.
Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s “The Wild Robot” rounded out the top five in its eighth weekend in theaters with an additional $4.3 million. The animated film surpassed $300 million worldwide.
This weekend is a bit of a stopover before the Thanksgiving tentpoles arrive. Next week, “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” face off in theaters with “Moana 2”, which also stars Johnson, sailing in the Wednesday before the holiday.
“Gladiator II” also got a bit of a head start internationally, where it opened in 63 markets this weekend to gross $87 million. That's a record for filmmaker Ridley Scott and for an R-rated international release from Paramount. It opens in the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 22.
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
1. “Red One,” $34.1 million.
2. “Venom: The Last Dance,” $7.4 million.
3. “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $5.4 million.
4. “Heretic,” $5.2 million.
5. “The Wild Robot,” $4.3 million.
6. “Smile 2,” $3 million.
7. “Conclave,” $2.9 million.
8. “Hello, Love, Again,” $2.3 million.
9. “A Real Pain,” $2.3 million.
10. “Anora,” $1.8 million.
This image released by Prime shows Kristofer Hivju, left, and Dwayne Johnson in a scene from "Red One." (Frank Masi/Prime via AP)
This image released by Prime shows Lucy Liu in a scene from "Red One." (Frank Masi/Prime via AP)
This image released by Prime shows a scene from "Red One." (Frank Masi/Prime via AP)
This image released by Prime shows Dwayne Johnson, left, and Chris Evans in a scene from "Red One." (Frank Masi/Prime via AP)
The 2024 presidential election featured sky-high turnout, approaching the historic levels of the 2020 contest and contradicting long-held conventional political wisdom that Republicans struggle to win races in which many people vote.
According to Associated Press elections data, more than 153 million ballots were cast in this year's race between Republican Donald Trump, now the president-elect, and Democrat Kamala Harris, the vice president, with hundreds of thousands of more still being tallied in slower-counting states such as California. When those ballots are fully tabulated, the number of votes will come even closer to the 158 million in the 2020 presidential contest, which was the highest turnout election since women were given the right to vote more than a century ago.
“Trump is great for voter turnout in both parties,” said Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts University.
The former president's victory in both the Electoral College and popular vote — Trump currently leads Harris by nearly 2.5 million votes nationwide — also contradicts the belief in politics that Democrats, not Republicans, benefit from high-turnout elections.
Trump himself voiced it in 2020 when he warned that a Democratic bill to expand mail balloting would lead to “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” That warning came as Trump began to sow conspiracy theories about using mail voting during the coronavirus pandemic, which he then used to falsely claim his 2020 loss was due to fraud.
That claim led to a wave of new laws adding regulations and rolling back forms of voting in GOP-controlled states and an expansion of mail voting in Democratic-led ones, as the battle over turnout became a central part of political debate. Such laws usually have a miniscule impact on voting but inspired allegations of voter suppression from Democrats and cheating from Republicans.
“It's such an embarrassing story for proponents on both sides, because it's so obviously wrong,” Hersh said.
Though both sides are likely to continue to battle over how elections are run, Trump's high-turnout victory may take some of the urgency out of that confrontation.
“Now I think, you just won the popular vote, I think it'll quiet down,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican data analyst and pollster who has long argued his party can succeed in a high-turnout election with a diverse electorate.
Experts note that turnout in the seven swing states at the heart of the election was even higher than in the rest of the country.
“This was a campaign in seven states much more so than previous elections have felt like,” Ruffini said.
While the rest the country shifted significantly from 2020, when Democrat Joe Biden won the popular vote by 7 million, or 4.5 percentage points, the outcome in the swing states was closer. The turnout story also was different. Turnout dropped from 2020 in noncompetitive states such as Illinois, which recorded more than 500,000 fewer votes than in the last presidential election, and Ohio, which reported more than 300,000 less.
Meanwhile, the number of votes cast topped those in 2020 in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which Trump won. Arizona's turnout was nearly even with four years ago, as the state continued to count ballots.
Harris even met or topped Biden's vote totals in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, and turnout has far eclipsed that of the 2016 presidential election, when 135.6 million voters cast ballots in a race won by Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton. The problem for Democrats is that Trump did better in the battlegrounds than four years ago.
“The Harris campaign did a pretty good job getting voters out who wouldn't have come out,” said Tom Bonier, a Democratic data analyst. “She did get her voters out. Trump got more.”
Those Trump turnout victories included first-time voter Jasmine Perez, 26, who voted for Trump at the Las Vegas Raiders stadium.
"I’m a Christian and he really aligns with a lot of my values as a Christian in America, and I like that he openly promotes Christianity in America,” Perez said.
Voting alongside her was Diego Zubek, 27, who voted for Trump in 2016 but didn’t vote in 2020 because he figured Trump would win easily. He voted for Trump this year.
“I wasn’t going to let that happen again,” Zubek said.
A key part of the GOP strategy was reaching out to voters such as Perez and Zubek, encouraging early and mail voting after Republicans had largely abandoned them in the past two elections due to Trump's lies about vote fraud. Conservatives mounted extensive voter registration and get-out-the-vote operations targeting infrequent voters, a demographic that many operatives have long believed would not vote for the GOP.
More than half the votes were cast before Election Day this year, according to AP tracking of the advanced vote.
During the campaign, Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point Action, a conservative group that ran a get-out-the-vote campaign with more than 1,000 workers in multiple battleground states, cited Stacey Abrams, a onetime Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, as an inspiration in his group's effort. Abrams' success mobilizing Black voters and other groups in her home state that were less likely to vote helped pave the way for Biden's 2020 win there.
“We saw that Trump has this amazing reservoir of low-propensity conservatives who needed a little coaxing,” Kolvet said in an interview Friday. “They didn't think their vote mattered, and their No. 1 pushback was they didn't understand, really, how to vote.”
Kolvet acknowledged that conservatives long believed large turnout didn't help them but contended that's changed in the Trump era: “Our ideas are more popular,” he said.
Whether it continues is up to what happens next in Washington.
“It's going to be up to conservatives to make good on those campaign promises,” Kolvet said.
FILE - Voters wait in line to cast their ballots at the Kingston Armory in Wilkes-Barre, Pa, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
Voters fill out ballots at voting booths inside the Bismarck Event Center during Election Day Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Bismarck, N.D. (Tanner Ecker/The Bismarck Tribune via AP)
Voters line up outside the Gallatin County Courthouse on Election Day in Bozeman, Mont., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Tommy Martino)
Voters wait in line to cast their ballots outside a polling station on the Navajo Nation in Chinle, Ariz., on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
Voters wait in a long line at a polling place at the Michelle and Barack Obama Sports Complex on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
