Watch: “You Won’t Believe What Dwayne Johnson’s $250 Million Movie Could This Be The Movie After 5 Years of Failures!”

Red One was supposed to be Dwayne Johnson’s next big blockbuster hit, but I’ll be shocked if it manages to snap his current cold streak at the box office. Once known for being “franchise viagra” and injecting IP with financial upside, The Rock became a one-man solution for struggling franchises and blockbusters over the years. His sustained popularity with audiences helped make Red One the latest attempt for him to launch a new, original franchise. The Christmas-themed blockbuster comes from Amazon Studios and holds an exclusive theatrical release for November 2024, which will further test Dwayne Johnson’s box office credibility.

The Rock is no stranger to delivering massive box office hits with original ideas or movies based on IP that otherwise had not been tackled. Even if I didn’t enjoy every movie like San Andreas, Rampage, or Skyscraper, they are clear examples of his star power working wonders at the box office. It is still easy to look at him and see a bankable actor who revived multiple franchises and found success away from them, even with The Rock’s biggest box office bombs. But after the last few years, I have doubts about him doing it again with Red One.

The cold, hard truth for Dwayne Johnson is that his standing as a consistent box office star has faded in recent years. The last time I can honestly say that he was the star of a big blockbuster that performed well at the box office was in 2019. He delivered two notable hits that year, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw and Jumanji: The Next Level, which both made over $750 million worldwide. That was the end of a dominant run of roughly six years where his only real misstep was 2017’s Baywatch

Since 2019, Dwayne Johnson has not been the lead in any movie that has lived up to his reputation. Part of this is due to COVID-19 and theaters shutting down, but the rise of streaming and poorly reviewed blockbusters are also factors. Johnson’s cold streak at the box office officially began with Jungle Cruise’s release in 2021. The live-action Disney movie based on the theme park ride only made $210 million against a $200 million budget. Although it did add at least $45 million in sales through Disney+ (via Deadline), it still goes down as a financial loss.

The more surprising development to me was Dwayne Johnson’s cold streak extending in 2022 with two DC movies. DC League of Super Pets made $200 million at the box office, which likely means it broke even. But, that total was still frankly underwhelming considering the DC branding, star-studded voice cast, and how often animated movies can hit much bigger thanks to being family-friendly entertainment. It only got worse with Black Adam’s box office finishing at $390 million, resulting in conflicting reports of the film’s profitability or failure

To help put Dwayne Johnson’s cold streak in perspective, he is currently in the midst of his longest drought in over a decade without a leading role in a movie that made over $400 million. The last time he went more than two years without a $400 million earner was before he joined Fast & Furious and became a star that could draw in that much business. Furthermore, four out of five movies he starred in before Jungle Cruise hit that benchmark, with Skyscraper’s $300 million the lone exception – and that was still enough to be profitable.