“Purple One” did not seem like fairly the success Amazon desired when it arrived in late 2024. However a 12 months later, the film is fulfilling its goal as a significant hit on Prime Video, the place it is at present at quantity three on the streaming charts. It appears stars Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans acquired the evergreen Christmas hit they needed in any case.
“Purple One” did not have the most effective time on the field workplace in 2024, and it actually did not recoup its price range. However as /Movie’s Ryan Scott wrote on the time, calling “Purple One” a flop is not precisely honest. Amazon did spend a ridiculous $250 million on the film, which, when coupled with the $100 million advertising spend, means “Purple One” value $350 million. If that is not an instance of studios green-lighting irresponsible budgets that find yourself kneecapping them, I am undecided what’s. However Amazon was at all times enjoying the lengthy recreation with its festive action-comedy flick.
“Purple One” was initially supposed for streaming and was solely given a theatrical run after the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike postponed its deliberate 2023 Prime Video launch. So, regardless of the very fact the film made simply $186 million on the worldwide field workplace in opposition to its egregious $350 million preliminary funding, the true income had been at all times supposed to return from subscriber retention over on Prime Video. Considered that method, the film made virtually $200 million that Amazon wasn’t even banking on.
Issues continued to lookup when “Purple One” hit Prime Video on December 12, 2024, and introduced in some 50 million views in its first 4 days on the service. Now, Prime Video is simply being additional vindicated, as “Purple One” has resurfaced for Christmas 2025 and is climbing up the charts, proving its value as a perennial favourite (even when its evaluations are shockingly dangerous).
Critics noticed purple with Purple One
Previous to its launch, “Purple One” seemed to be a field workplace catastrophe within the making — which it form of was. What’s extra, critics weren’t impressed. The movie stars Dwayne Johnson as Callum Drift, head of North Pole safety, who groups up with Chris Evans’ hacker Jack O’Malley to discover a kidnapped Santa Claus (J.Ok. Simmons) on Christmas Eve. The mission sends them on a globe-trotting journey to save lots of Christmas … one which, sadly, did not evoke a lot whimsy and merriment amongst critics.
The film at present has a 30% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers throwing round phrases comparable to “gaudy wrapping with no substance” and “the peak of soulless commercialization.” Even the constructive evaluations appear shaky. For instance, in line with the web site, Brandon Yu of the New York Occasions gave “Purple One” a constructive evaluation whereas truly describing it as “a movie that has the braveness to ask: What if the Santa Claus story was like a Marvel film?” Simply in case it is not clear, Yu additionally went on to dub the film a “significantly egregious piece of economic slop” and “blandly polished inanity” that lacks the “intelligent sense of irony or correctly wacky sensibility that will make one thing this dumb truly float.”
So, who truly favored this film? Properly, Amy Nicholson of the Washington Put up for one, who considered “Purple One” as “a child-pleaser that can stay on eternally in a again bed room whereas the grown-ups do their boring grownup chitchat on the lounge sofa.” That leads properly to the opposite group of people that truly favored this film: Prime Video subscribers. Seemingly proving Nicholson proper, viewers have despatched “Purple One” again into the streamer’s charts for festive season 2025 (and can probably proceed to take action for years to return).
Seems, Amazon’s absurd price range for Purple One was most likely value it
“Purple One” wasn’t precisely a triumph. In truth, its debut gave the impression to be a little bit of a blunder. After its ostensibly disappointing field workplace take, issues had been solely made worse by the affirmation that Dwayne Johnson did, in reality, have a slightly disgusting behavior on the set of “Purple One,” all of which mixed to offer the entire thing a slightly tragic side. However there was no arguing with the movie’s streaming efficiency. Whereas “Purple One” is not ever going to make a listing of Johnson’s finest film performances, the festive action-comedy managed to rack up probably the most views of any Amazon MGM Studios movie on Prime Video. Now, it seems to be prefer it’s repeating its success a 12 months later.
Streaming viewership tracker FlixPatrol is reporting that “Purple One” has been slowly climbing the charts in the US. After hitting quantity 5 on the film rankings on November 25, 2025, the movie climbed to the fourth and third positions, the place it at present sits on the time of writing. Because the festive season kicks off in earnest, “Purple One” is bound to at the least keep the place it’s, if not climb to the highest spot. That ought to come as excellent news to Johnson and Chris Evans, as they might each profit from including a perennial vacation favourite to their respective filmographies proper now.
It isn’t simply the States which can be loving “Purple One,” both. The film is charting in 40 nations around the globe as of December 1, 2025, and that quantity will solely improve as Christmas attracts nearer. Was it well worth the $350 million Amazon spent? Properly, if this retains taking place yearly, then clearly it was.
