Having encountered what might be the most high-profile and embarrassing setback of his professional career via the whole Black Adam fiasco, Dwayne Johnson will be looking to bounce back in a major way when Red One premieres towards the end of the year.
As a Prime Video exclusive, it won’t give us any indication as to whether or not his box office drawing power truly is on the wane, but we’re curious to see how it turns out regardless. To put it bluntly, the festive action blockbuster sounds like it could either be a uniquely refreshing spin on a well-worn formula, or an overstuffed disaster.
Pitched by Seven Bucks chief Hiram Garcia as Hobbs & Shaw meets Miracle on 34th Street, veteran Fast & Furious scribe Chris Morgan penned the screenplay, while Chris Evans will co-star alongside Johnson, with J.K. Simmons bringing grizzled gravitas to the most jacked version of Santa Claus we’ve ever seen.
It sounds certifiably insane – although we can’t decide if that’s a positive or a negative quite yet – but Johnson has deepened the mystery even further by revealing on Instagram that he’s set to go toe-to-toe with a hulking (and thankfully practical) Krampus.
Red One was previously touted as featuring plenty of “badass Christmas lore,” and even if that’s a statement that sounds fairly nonsensical on paper, the fact we’re getting a gigantic Krampus that comfortably towers over the hulking specimen that is Dwayne Johnson is reason to draw a sliver of encouragement that we’re not getting yet another one of the actor’s by-the-numbers effects-driven epics.