‘It looks absolutely terrible’: A Dwayne Johnson ‘paycheck’ movie with a $200M budget is already destined to fail

Ah, the paycheck movie – a true Hollywood tradition. These movies, where the actor obviously took them because they were remodeling their kitchen or something, crop up from time to time and then gloriously bomb. From what we’re hearing, it looks like Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans have one for the ages coming out this Christmas, called Red One. At least they’re keeping a tradition going.

Matt Belloni, the former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and co-founder of Puck News, gave us an early Christmas present. It turns out Red One, which had a budget of around $253 million, is tracking to pull in around $36 million. Woof. How? You might be asking. Is it really that bad?

Honestly, we had the same response, at first. Things change when you watch the trailers. They just.. change. You know how there are things in life you can’t unsee? Things that stick with you like lint? This is one of those things.

The premise of this movie is that Santa Claus, who is incredibly buff for a reason no one understands, has been kidnapped. Johnson is his assistant, but North Pole authorities have called in Chris Evans, who’s a “level four naughty lister.” That’s a real quote from the movie.

After watching the trailer, $36 million seems high. How did a Christmas movie end up with this budget? There’s some fun backstory behind that, which we’ll get into that in a second.

We should point out first that Johnson is no stranger to bombing. This is the same man who thought Black Adam was going to be the new top superhero after all. That movie cost somewhere around $200 million. It needed to make around $600 million to be profitable. It made much, much less than that.

Last year around Christmas, Deadline wrote a story that Red One was testing through the roof. That smelled funny, and some posited that Amazon MGM was trying to get in front of stories that would say the opposite. Sure enough, that’s exactly what started to happen. Even better, the movie’s budget reportedly got out of control partly because Johnson seems to think the world revolves around him.

Back in April, The Wrap published a piece called “‘Red One’ Down: How Dwayne Johnson’s Tardiness Led to a $250 Million Runaway Production.” Good title, no? Turns out, Johnson would stroll into work late all the time, with the average being around somewhere in the 8-hour range. Other days he would simply not show up.

These selfish actions by the world’s biggest ego cost the production around $50 million. “Dwayne truly doesn’t give a f**k,” a source said.

The movie’s been described as an “unmitigated disaster” and “ChatGPT’s idea of what a commercial, four-quadrant film should be.” Wait just a second. You mean a Santa Claus action movie isn’t a good idea? Who would’ve thought?

But what are the people saying? That’s what matters, right? “Shocked it’s that high. It looks absolutely terrible,” one X user said about the budget. Someone else asked “how the hell” a Christmas movie has a “bigger budget than all four of the first Transformers movies??” Yes, it’s probably going to bomb. That doesn’t mean it won’t be fun to watch, though. It’s hard not to watch a train wreck.