Netflix’s recent hit movie Red Notice is so popular that it beat out both Shang-Chi and Jungle Cruise on the Nielsen streaming charts. According to Deadline, Red Notice racked up over 1.8 billion minutes of streaming during the week of Nov. 8 to 14. For comparison, over on Disney+ Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings hit 1.1 billion streaming minutes, and Jungle Cruise napped 908 million. Notably, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars in both Red Notice and Jungle Cruise.
In Red Notice, Johnson plays FBI agent John Hartley, who is forced to team up with art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) in order to find the three eggs of Cleopatra before they are located by Sarah Black (Gal Gadot), another notorious art thief who is known as the Bishop. The movie was written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, a filmmaker who previously worked with Johnson on Central Intelligence and Skyscraper. Notably, Thurber is teaming up with Netflix again for his next project: a film adaptation of Tom Clancy’s The Division, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain.
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Decider reports that in a previous Red Notice press interview, Thurber opened up about the use of improv while filming, and explained that he strongly encouraged the cast to go off-script if they felt they had an idea that was right for the scene. “[Reynolds] is so talented in so many areas but certainly, comedy is something that he is exceptional at,” Thurber said. “For me, it was always ‘Let’s get what’s written once really well.’ And then I don’t need the same punchline six times, I would rather have six different punch lines.”
The director went on to say that “when you’re making the movie and you’re showing it to audiences and you’re trying to create laughs, you’re trying to make sure that the jokes work. And sometimes the one you think was gonna kill doesn’t, and this weird thing that somebody says works. And it’s very humbling every time.”
However, while he made room for some non-script takes, Thurber was clear that much of the final product is what he wrote. “On Red Notice, I would say 85 to 90 percent of it was as scripted,” he explained. “But it’s that 10 to 15 percent extra that makes all the difference in the world.” on Netflix.
