Is Dwayne Johnson still as big of a star as he seems to think he is? That’s the question that will be at the tip of everyone’s tongue this weekend, with his latest four-quadrant family film, Red One, opening to an underwhelming $34 million domestically. While that’s not a truly terrible number, what makes it sting more than it would otherwise is that the movie carries an astronomical budget of at least $200 million, meaning the movie may – rightly or wrongly – be viewed as something of a flop.

Consider this: Black Adam, which has a reputation for being a flop, still opened with about twice what Red One did. Unless word-of-mouth is terrific, Red One might have difficulty crawling to $100 million domestically.

Yet, it may not be as big of a flop as some think. The fact is, it was designed as a streaming movie for Prime Video, so one could view the theatrical release as an extended tease for its inevitable streaming launch. With the holiday theme, I’d expect it to premiere on Prime within weeks, which may hurt its long-term box office viability. Still, it opened with about $9 million more than I thought it would, and the A-minus CinemaScore rating isn’t half bad.

Venom: The Last Dance slid into second place, with a third weekend total of $7.35 million, adding up to a $127 million total, posting a 54% decline from last week. While that’s not an amazing domestic total for a superhero film, overseas, Venom 3 has been a blockbuster, with it on the cusp of breaking $500 million internationally before long.

Lionsgate’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is on track to become their highest-grossing film of the year, making $5.4 million for a total of just under $20 million. It should be able to pass Lionsgate’s biggest earner of the year so far, The Strangers: Chapter One, which made $35 million domestically. Ouch – $35 million is their best? It’s been a BAD year for this studio.

Meanwhile, A24’s Heretic fell 52% – which is a solid number for a horror movie – to a second-weekend gross of $5.3 million and a $20.4 million total, which ain’t bad for a movie that cost under $10 million. The Wild Robot rounded out the top five with $4.3 million and a $137 million total, while Smile 2 started to wrap up its run with $2.9 million in sixth place. The $65 million total is far below the $100 million plus made by the first film, but it still performed well for an R-rated horror film.

Another movie that’s proven to be a word-of-mouth hit is Focus Features’ Conclave. The film only fell 28% this weekend and made $2.85 million for a $26 million gross. It’s nice to see an adult drama having such staying power, which is also the case for Sean Baker’s Anora, which is further down the chart in 10th place with $1.8 million and a $10.5 million gross for Neon.

The Filipino romantic comedy sequel Hello, Love, Again came out of nowhere to make $2.3 million on only 250 screens. It had the highest per-screen average of the week, with $9.3K per screen. Finally, Searchlight’s Sundance breakout, A Real Pain, had a solid wide break with $2.3 million in ninth place. We loved this indie gem (read our review), and it deserves to be seenI

Next weekend should give the box office a huge boost, with Hollywood hoping the Glicked phenomenon (Gladiator/Wicked) becomes the next Barbenheimer. Only time will tell! 

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