The Rock's $250 Million Piss Bottle Movie

Remember that movie The Rock's assistant supposedly came up with? It has a poster and a trailer now.

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(Sorry for the double post today, folks, but I had to cover this one, and it was timely).

MGM

A few weeks back The Wrap published one of my very favorite kinds of articles — the kind where dozens of anonymous sources open up about what a dickhead a certain celebrity is. In this case, that celebrity was Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who was accused of everything from regularly being eight hours late to set (eight hours transcends “late,” that’s showing up on an entirely different day) to using sets to shoot footage for his own products to peeing in water bottles and making assistants dispose of them. (Don’t act like you wouldn’t be doing this if you were famous, I’d be making people carry my pee everywhere).

Great stuff, all. Though my personal favorite bit was about how The Rock had promoted his ex-brother-in-law/personal assistant to run his entire production company. An anonymous source compared the assistant, Hiram Garcia, to Turtle from Entourage, saying he had no idea how to run a production. One of the best parts of this section of the article was a description of an alleged incident in which Garcia and The Rock made a play to run the entire slate of DC films:

Matters all came to a head in 2022 when Johnson and Dany Garcia [The Rock’s ex-wife, Hiram’s sister] met with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav on not only inserting Superman back into “Black Adam,” but according to four insiders with knowledge of the meeting, positioning Seven Bucks to run DC and replace then-chief Walter Hamada.

Garcia wasn’t hired to run the unit, and Johnson and Seven Bucks were evicted from DC shortly after the hiring of James Gunn and Peter Safran to run the division. Additionally, former Superman actor Henry Cavill fired Dany Garcia as his manager as a result.

Amazing.

Aaaanyway, the entire piece was framed around the supposedly disastrous production of Red One, an idea initially conceived by the Turtle-like former assistant, whose supposed inexperience, combined with The Rock’s unprofessionalism, had caused Red One’s budget to balloon past $250 million.

What is Red One, you ask? (I’m glad you asked):

Amazon was hoping to launch a potential franchise with “Red One,” which is about a villain who kidnaps Santa Claus from the North Pole, after which an E.L.F. (Extremely Large and Formidable) operative joins forces with a bounty hunter to find Santa and save Christmas. [source]

Santa Clause, an ELF, and a Bounty Hunter. Sure, why not!

Fast-forward to today, when I was preparing a new This Week In Movie Posters, and saw the Red One poster:

How many angry phone calls went back and forth about The Rock not being in the poster? Or was that a mutual decision made in an attempt to control the damage from the article?

Yes, JK Simmons plays a jacked Santa Claus. Also, why is Santa Claus jacked but he also has a jacked friend (the “E.L.F.”)? And why does the jacked friend who is an operative need to team up with another operative (the bounty hunter)? Is the other operative also jacked?? Where is this taking place, the The North Swole? (If that joke isn’t in the movie somewhere I’ll eat my hat).

Luckily the trailer also dropped today, so hopefully it can help answer some of these questions for us:

Incredible.

This is one of the most fake-trailer-in-Tropic-Thunder-ass trailers I’ve seen in a long time. Movies are back, baby!

There’s so, so much to love about this, starting with the fact that the reindeer horns look like a tribal tattoo in a way that I have to imagine was intentional:

The story, meanwhile, is transparently just “What if Olympus Has Fallen but with Santa Claus?” (Olympus Has Fallen, meanwhile, was just “what if White House Down but competent?”)

$250 million! I could’ve come up with this idea for a Chipotle gift card. And yet, even with something that so easily writes itself, they managed to stuff it to the absolute gills with shit they were obviously hoping some social media managers would turn into memes.

Horny reindeer… Talking Polar Bear a la Guardians of the Galaxy… Krampus playing the UFC Power Slap game… Jacked CGI snowmen… It’s like “I’ve seen movies” meets “I’ve been on Instagram!”

The strangest thing about this movie (other than it existing or having cost $250 million to make, I mean) is that it’s about a jacked Santa Claus with a jacked friend who hires a bounty hunter, and the bounter hunter is played by Chris Evans. Who famously got jacked to play Captain America, only in this movie they tried to turn him into Jason Bateman for some reason. Shouldn’t the Bounty Hunter also be jacked? Is it because the Bounty Hunter also has to be the computer hacker character that’s in every action movie now?

Even so, if Ving Rhames in the Mission Impossible series has taught us anything, it’s that the computer hacker character should also be big and strong.

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This Week In Movie Posters

Welcome to the This Week In Movie Posters, the feature in which we go through all the week’s new movie posters and read way too much into them. Blessed are the paid subscribers, as without them, none of this would be possible. All posters via IMPA.

Hey, it’s a documentary about queer comedians. Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? I like how the collection of comedians chosen and all the rainbow flags weren’t enough to tip you off, they had to break down and just write “gay pride” on there. Feels like an apology.

By the way, if there’s one surefire way to make people feel disappointed and underwhelmed by comedy, it’s to tell them that there’s a JOKE REVOLUTION going and that these jokes are CHANGING THE WORLD!!!!

(Jokes do not change the world! And that’s okay!)

Oh, I’m questioning everything alright. I do appreciate when a poster can give us just one or two phrases and some imagery and none of it really fits together but does make you curious.

Blueberry pie? Does someone have sex with a blueberry pie in this?? Sorry, I grew up in the 90s. I’m conditioned to assume that if there’s a pie in a movie poster someone’s fucking it.

Kieren Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg seem confused and disturbed by stuff. I do like the vertical design, and the way it makes you keep scrolling to find answers.

Mismatched cousins David and Benji reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the odd-couple's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. [IMDB]

It’s also written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg. Neat?

Here’s a new poster for Inside Out 2. Did you know this thing has already grossed more than Dune 2 and its second weekend beat Barbie? Good for those plucky underdogs at (*checks notes*) uh, Disney, I guess. Anyway, this is the sadness character and these are phrases that describe the feeling of being sad.

Here’s the poster for My Spy: The Eternal City, which is actually a sequel to My Spy. I don’t remember that one coming out, but that was in 2020 so probably a lot of people don’t. I’m glad Dave Bautista got to go to Rome, I guess.

We love when muscular guys have to take care of kids, don’t we, folks? I hear this one is just like The Game Plan except the star showed up to the set on time.

And here’s the character poster for Joy in Inside Out 2. Why are they still explaining the characters? Didn’t we get all this from Inside Out 1? Can’t argue with success, I suppose.

Phew, okay, finally, a new character for the sequel. What’s this one’s name? Swoony? Horny? FOMO? I’m not looking this up.

Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane? And it’s orange and criticky? Fine, I’ll bite.

“From the acclaimed director of A Man Called Otto and Finding Neverland… and the producers of Jesus Revolution…”

Boy, that is a range of credits. (Finding Neverland is probably my favorite Johnny Depp performance, but don’t quote me on that). Hard to know what all those very different movies mean for this one, but… Didn’t I once say that snow flakes and lens flares are to Christian movies what sparks are to action movies? I’m sticking with that here and guessing vaguely religious-themed.

Based on the book by the best-selling author of Wonder, this uplifting movie shows how one act of kindness can live on forever. [IMDB]

Hmm, playing a little coy, even in the synopsis. Las Vegas should let you bet on how overtly Jesus-y it gets.

Sudden Changes… First Dates… what’s this character, Period? And didn’t they already make this movie and wasn’t it called Turning Red? (I love Turning Red. My son just calls it “Fox.” He asks to see “Fox” all the time.)

Maybe puberty should’ve been the plot complication in Inside Out all along. That seems more interesting and better constructed than “a girl moves to a new town and forgets how to play hockey.”

“A rough and tumble farce?” Jeez, stop describing my lovemaking.

It’s called “between the temples” and yet it’s the tops of their heads that are touching. Curious.

This is a poster for The Quiet Place: Day 1, which is kind of a misnomer considering it’s the third movie in this series. Between this, Argylle, The Fabulous Four from last week, and how many others?, I was not prepared for how much of a poster trope cats would become this year. I’m not against it, it’s just a weird commonality. You’re going to think I Photohopped this next one myself but I swear I didn’t…

“Eh, just put a cat in it.”

I don’t have any particular dislike for Ryan Reynolds, or at least that’s what I would’ve told you right up until the moment when I have to hear one of his Mint Mobile radio ads.

Are you trying to make me dislike you? Switch it up, man, jeez.