Dwayne Johnson's 2024 Christmas Movie Is Taking Over Prime Video After Flopping In Theaters

"Red One" didn't appear to be quite the success Amazon desired when it arrived in late 2024. But a year later, the movie is fulfilling its purpose as a major hit on Prime Video, where it's currently at number three on the streaming charts. It seems stars Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans got the evergreen Christmas hit they wanted after all.

"Red One" didn't have the best time at the box office in 2024, and it certainly didn't recoup its budget. But as /Film's Ryan Scott wrote at the time, calling "Red One" a flop isn't exactly fair. Amazon did spend a ridiculous $250 million on the movie, which, when coupled with the $100 million marketing spend, means "Red One" cost $350 million. If that's not an example of studios green-lighting irresponsible budgets that end up kneecapping them, I'm not sure what is. But Amazon was always playing the long game with its festive action-comedy flick. 

"Red One" was originally intended for streaming and was only given a theatrical run after the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike postponed its planned 2023 Prime Video release. So, despite the fact the movie made just $186 million at the worldwide box office against its egregious $350 million initial investment, the real profits were always supposed to come from subscriber retention over on Prime Video. Viewed that way, the movie made almost $200 million that Amazon wasn't even banking on.

Things continued to look up when "Red One" hit Prime Video on December 12, 2024, and brought in some 50 million views in its first four days on the service. Now, Prime Video is only being further vindicated, as "Red One" has resurfaced for Christmas 2025 and is climbing up the charts, proving its worth as a perennial favorite (even if its reviews are shockingly bad).

Prior to its release, "Red One" appeared to be a box office disaster in the making — which it sort of was. What's more, critics weren't impressed. The film stars Dwayne Johnson as Callum Drift, head of North Pole security, who teams up with Chris Evans' hacker Jack O'Malley to find a kidnapped Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) on Christmas Eve. The mission sends them on a globe-trotting adventure to save Christmas ... one that, unfortunately, didn't evoke much whimsy and merriment among critics.

The movie currently has a 30% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers throwing around phrases such as "gaudy wrapping with no substance" and "the height of soulless commercialization." Even the positive reviews seem shaky. For example, according to the website, Brandon Yu of the New York Times gave "Red One" a positive review while actually describing it as "a film that has the courage to ask: What if the Santa Claus story was like a Marvel movie?" Just in case it isn't clear, Yu also went on to dub the movie a "particularly egregious piece of commercial slop" and "blandly polished inanity" that lacks the "clever sense of irony or properly wacky sensibility that would make something this dumb actually float."

So, who actually liked this movie? Well, Amy Nicholson of the Washington Post for one, who viewed "Red One" as "a child-pleaser that will live on forever in a back bedroom while the grown-ups do their boring adult chitchat on the living room couch." That leads nicely to the other group of people who actually liked this movie: Prime Video subscribers. Seemingly proving Nicholson right, viewers have sent "Red One" back into the streamer's charts for festive season 2025 (and will likely continue to do so for years to come).

"Red One" wasn't exactly a triumph. In fact, its debut seemed to be a bit of a blunder. After its ostensibly disappointing box office take, things were only made worse by the confirmation that Dwayne Johnson did, in fact, have a rather disgusting habit on the set of "Red One," all of which combined to give the whole thing a rather tragic aspect. But there was no arguing with the film's streaming performance. While "Red One" isn't ever going to make a list of Johnson's best movie performances, the festive action-comedy managed to rack up the most views of any Amazon MGM Studios film on Prime Video. Now, it looks like it's repeating its success a year later.

Streaming viewership tracker FlixPatrol is reporting that "Red One" has been slowly climbing the charts in the United States. After hitting number five on the movie rankings on November 25, 2025, the film climbed to the fourth and third positions, where it currently sits at the time of writing. As the festive season kicks off in earnest, "Red One" is sure to at least stay where it is, if not climb to the top spot. That should come as good news to Johnson and Chris Evans, as they could both benefit from adding a perennial holiday favorite to their respective filmographies right now.

It's not just the States that are loving "Red One," either. The movie is charting in 40 countries around the world as of December 1, 2025, and that number will only increase as Christmas draws closer. Was it worth the $350 million Amazon spent? Well, if this keeps happening every year, then clearly it was.