Netflix have recently been making some serious inroads when it comes to attempting to establish themselves as players in the blockbuster business, recruiting one of the genre’s biggest names in Michael Bay and handing him $150 million to deliver his signature brand of pyrotechnic mayhem with 6 Underground, which was watched by over 80 million people in the first four weeks it was available.
The streaming service are coming off an even bigger hit following the release of Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction, which generated massive buzz and quickly became Netflix’s most-watched original movie ever, and looks poised to launch the company’s first major film franchise. Given their seemingly endless cash reserves and desire to play Hollywood at their own game, Netflix have no intentions of stopping there, and next year looks set to deliver their most-high profile blockbuster yet.
Red Notice will see the world’s biggest movie star head to streaming, as Dwayne Johnson re-teams with his Central Intelligence and Skyscraper director Rawson Marshall Thurber for the $150 million action thriller. If that wasn’t enough, fellow A-list stars Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot will lend support, with the trio playing an FBI agent, a conman and an art thief, respectively.
Production was recently shut down due to the Coronavirus pandemic, but in a recent interview, Reynolds offered up some new details about the shoot, and it sounds as though he’s having a great time working with his longtime buddy Johnson.
“I think one of the reasons I’ve been friends with him is that he really laughs at himself, which is one the things I love about him. If you kind of parrot back his thing that he’s doing in the movie, like if his line is, ‘I’m special agent John Harvey of the FBI and if you parrot it back like 27% faster with a cuss word like, ‘I’m special agent John Harvey of the FBI, motherf-cker!’ He just, he’s gone. He leaves the room and he never comes back.”
“We made it about 1 or 2 days past the half way point mark,” he said. “We were just over the half way point mark. We probably would’ve made it, we would’ve finished the movie if we didn’t spend 90% of the time dicking around laughing. I’ve known Dwayne for like 15 years so we tend to spend time trying to make each other laugh which is a really irresponsible thing to do with Netflix, their money, but it makes for a really good movie once you get it in the can! Take 28, you’re set.”
The actors having fun on set doesn’t always translate into a good movie, but two stars with the undeniable charm and charisma of Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds seem poised to make one hell of a double-act, especially if their scenes together in Hobbs & Shaw are anything to go by. A globe-trotting heist thriller starring three big-name actors with plenty of experience in the action genre seems destined for success, and Red Notice possesses all the ingredients to set yet another viewership record for Netflix.