Red One seemed like a bizarre experiment, some sort of action film-adjacent Santa Claus movie starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans that almost seemed to be a sort of parody of itself. But after terrible critic reviews and a mediocre box office, Red One has exploded to somehow become the biggest movie debut on Amazon Prime Video…ever.

Red One just hit Amazon Prime Video, and as a Prime-based movie, despite its theatrical run, that means its free for subscribers. And here, a week before Christmas, it instantly rocketed to 50 million viewers, a record for the entire platform. The movie is still playing on 3,000 screens in North America. Here’s what Amazon MGM head Jennifer Salke said about this development:

“Given the audience response to ‘Red One’ both in theaters and on Prime Video, the film will clearly be a perennial holiday favorite for years to come,” said Salke. “With ‘Red One,’ there was no doubt that strategy needed to include a theatrical release and associated marketing campaign, which drove audiences to theaters and generated awareness for the film with viewers who would ultimately tune in on Prime Video. It’s rewarding to see our plan pay off for customers, and we are incredibly thankful to the entire filmmaking team and cast who helped make it happen.”

Ah, so this was the plan all along! Perhaps, but the movie reportedly had a $250 million budget and has only made $175 million in theaters, despite its A-list stars. So what exactly happened here to change Red One’s fortunes and make it a streaming mega-hit? A few things, most likely:

• Red One may have been a miss with critics, with a terrible 30% Rotten Tomatoes score, but its audience score was a stellar 90%.
• Do not underestimate the draw of The Rock in particular. He’s no stranger to critical misses but audience hits. I’m reminded of another Red-based Rock movie, Red Notice on Netflix, which had 37% critic score but a 92% audience score and was one of Netflix’s biggest original movies ever, if not the biggest.
• It’s Christmas. There are just no other new Christmas movies out that are this high profile with these kinds of A-listers. That alone is enough to generate interest. And you might be able to understand that while Red One may not have been worth a chilly trip to the theater for $60 with the family, seeing it plop down as a free Amazon Prime Video movie would result in a “oh sure let’s watch that” moment for a lot of subscribers. A whole lot, it turns out.

Even still, 50 million viewers in just a few days is something. I do wonder if that will warrant a sequel despite an underperforming box office, and if so, whether it may choose to go straight to Amazon instead. Maybe we’ll know next year.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.