Moviegoers got into the holiday spirit this weekend, and made Red One the No. 1 film at the box office.
The Christmas action comedy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson debuted in the top spot, after ringing up an estimated $34.1 million from 4,032 theaters across North America, Comscore reported Sunday.
That was enough to push Venom: The Last Dance out of the top spot after a three-week winning streak.
But Red One‘s $34 million debut doesn’t leave much to brag about when you factor in the film’s reported $250 million production budget, plus millions more to market the Amazon MGM Studios release.
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The comedy comes from Jumanji: The Next Level director Jacob Kasdan, who has a long history of working with Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson leads the cast of Red One as the North Pole’s head of security, who teams up with a notorious hacker (Chris Evans). Their mission is to track down Santa Claus (J. K. Simmons), who’s been kidnapped on Christmas Eve.
The cast also includes Lucy Liu, Bonnie Hunt, and Nick Kroll.
The team behind the film is probably hoping Santa will deliver a holiday miracle at the box office in the coming weeks, but that’s unlikely with the highly-anticipated Gladiator II and Wicked both scheduled to debut domestically on Nov. 22.
Red One received a strong “A-” CinemaScore from moviegoers this weekend.
Although critics handed the film a disappointing 33 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus saying it’s “wrapped in slick packaging but wholly lacking in holiday magic.”
Elsewhere this weekend at the box office, Venom: The Last Dance slipped to second place with $7.3 million, Comscore reported. To date the film has made $128 million domestically.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was third with $5.4 million in its second weekend.
The Hugh Grant-led horror film Heretic was fourth with $5.1 million in its second weekend, and The Wild Robot rounded out the top five with $4.3 million.
Check out the box office chart below from Comscore Senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian”
According to @Comscore @csMoviesUS @CSGlobalMovies please note this weekend’s overall total estimated 3-day Domestic box office is around $73.6 million & YTD 2024 (now at $7.079B through Sunday) is down 11.1% vs. 2023. pic.twitter.com/6CG45ejGJ7
— Paul Dergarabedian (@PDergarabedian) November 17, 2024
