While Dwayne Johnson is enjoying the box office windfall for his new film, Black Adam, his upcoming holiday movie with Chris Evans, Red One, is adding actors to its cast. Set to star in Red One are Nick Kroll (Big Mouth, Don’t Worry Darling), Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones, Cocaine Bear), Wesley Kimmel (WandaVision, The Book of Boba Fett), and Mary Elizabeth Ellis (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Licorice Pizza). Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) directs from a script by Hiram Garcia based on a story by Chris Morgan.
Red One, also starring Lucy Liu (Charlie’s Angels, Shazam 2) and Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), is keeping its plot at the bottom of Santa’s sack. However, whispers indicate Amazon is hoping to turn the concept into a franchise, with plans to merchandise the daylights out of its star-studded action-adventure holiday comedy.
Red One features two of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters, Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans. Both actors are pillars of superhero cinema, with Johnson playing DC‘s Black Adam, while Evans plays Steve Rogers (Captain America) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. DC’s Black Adam opened in theaters this past weekend, earning $140M worldwide. The superhero slugfest is Johnson’s biggest theatrical debut and one of the studio’s best-reviewed superhero films since Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
Are you excited to learn more about Red One when details finally reveal themselves? Will Johnson star as a brick shithouse Santa Claus with Evans playing a Burgermeister Meisterburger-type villain? Probably not. Maybe Red One plays more like Die Hard in a department store? I could see Johnson saving Christmas while Evans a holiday heist of epic proportions. However it shakes out, we’ll be there to bring you the details when the time comes. I’m excited to learn more about this movie and hope it’s like Schwarzenegger’s Jingle All the Way after drinking an alarming amount of ZOA energy drinks.