There were a few raised eyebrows when it was leaked that the new Netflix movie Red Notice, which arrived on the platform on Friday and stars the A-List trio of Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, cost upwards of $200 million to make, with around $60 million of that going straight to its three star names. However it looks like the price tag has been somewhat justified as the most expensive movie Netflix has ever produced has also gone on to become the biggest first day movie in the streamer’s history. Ryan Reynolds shared the news via his always-busy Twitter account, while also taking a moment to have a little fun poke at Taylor Swift in the process.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
WOW #RedNotice is @Netflix biggest ever opening day for a film. Congrats to this whole team! Can’t wait for Red Notice (Taylor’s Version) pic.twitter.com/tyGFqhKWao
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) November 14, 2021
“Wow, Red Notice is Netflix’s biggest ever opening day for a film,” the actor tweeted. “Congrats to this whole team! Can’t wait for Red Notice (Taylor’s Version).”
Of course, singer and actress Taylor Swift, who is close friends with Reynolds and Blake Lively, has been releasing a number of “Taylor’s Version” songs and albums recently, having re-recorded some of her earlier work. With one of these releases being the album Red, which broke the record for the most streamed album in a day on Spotify and made Swift the most streamed female in a day, Reynolds just couldn’t help himself in making a joke based on the close proximity of the movie to the album.
When it comes to Red Notice, the film didn’t gain overwhelmingly positive reviews from many critics, with most putting it in the category of “generic action flick,” but when it comes to the movies of Dwayne Johnson, most of his biggest hits could fall into that category with their formulaic approach, big stunts, action set pieces and a pretty linear storyline. There are not many people who enter one of The Rock’s films with the expectation of seeing Hamlet, and that is both why they prove so popular and keep audiences coming back for more. There is an expectation of two hours of escapism that comes with most of his output, where someone can leap from a crumbling building, grab onto a passing helicopter, swing through the window of another building and land a sucker punch on the bad guy without breaking a sweat. Sometimes, you just need to have something that defies logic and belief, and no one does that better than Johnson at his best.
So with the hard work seemingly done, Netflix will now be charting the movie’s stats over the coming weeks and beyond before they can really tell if the epic budget equals an epic “impact value”, which will determine the profitability of the project. While some studios are quick to give the green light to sequels when it comes to movies with their biggest stars in, Red Notice producer Dany Garcia said at the premiere that there was always a wait-and-see attitude to potential sequels.
“What we have planned is to let’s see how this goes,” Garcia told Variety. “I think there is… with Seven Bucks Productions, it’s almost like ‘franchise’ is just part of our conversation. But we’re also smart enough to say, ‘Let’s see how everything goes.'”
So far it seems to be going pretty well, as despite the lowly 39% critics approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Netflix viewers are loving the movie and it currently sits on an Audience Score of 92% Fresh, and after all, it is the audiences that bring in the money. Whether we will see Red Notice 2 in the future, which would have to first find time in the schedules of its busy leads, is something that will no doubt be discussed in the coming months.
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