Red Notice Gets 2 Sequel

Variety.com: Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds will return for two — yes, two — “Red Notice” sequels.

On the heels of Netflix’s announcement that “Red Notice,” an over-the-top comedic spy thriller, has become the streamer’s most-watched movie of all time, the company is in early development on a pair of follow-up films set in the global heist world.

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber is expected to resume filmmaking duties and plans to shoot the two sequels back-to-back. According to Deadline, who broke the news of the sequels, Netflix hopes to commence production in early 2023 given the busy schedules of everyone involved. (That means Reynolds’ previously announced sabbatical from acting may be short lived.) In the meantime, Thurber has been working on the screenplays.

Given the (ambiguous) success of “Red Notice,” Gadot, Johnson, Reynolds and Thurber are anticipating even bigger paydays for the sequels, which is saying something considering Johnson and Gadot each earned a massive $20 million for the first film.

Producers on “Red Notice” — a long list that consists of Johnson, Hiram Garcia and Dany Garcia of Seven Bucks Productions, Beau Flynn and Scott Sheldon of Flynn Pictures Co. and Thurber via Bad Version Productions — are each expected to come back.

In “Red Notice,” an FBI agent (Johnson) reluctantly teams up with a renowned art thief (Reynolds) to catch an even more dangerous criminal (Gadot). The movie isn’t likely to end up on critics’ best-of lists (it holds a 26% average on Rotten Tomatoes), but Netflix subscribers didn’t seem to mind the mostly negative reviews. According to Netflix’s internal metrics, “Red Notice” clocked 328.8 million viewing hours, beating the record previously held by Sandra Bullock’s 2018 thriller “Bird Box” at 282 million.

Variety’s chief film critic Peter Debruge described the film as “reasonably clever, so long as you don’t scrutinize it too closely.”

“Though the movie relies a bit too much on cumbersome exposition, it moves quickly enough that most audiences won’t stumble into — or even stop to question — the plot’s many holes,” Debruge wrote in his review. “Like a skilled con artist, the movie steals your time, but leaves you feeling like you got the more advantageous end of the deal.”