Red Notice writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber broke down how COVID-19 led to a complete revamping of one of the film's major action sequences.
The Netflix action/comedy has only been in production for two months when filming halted in March 2020 due to the pandemic. "We faced a number of challenges, the pandemic, of course, being No. 1," Thurber told Deadline, "and when we shut down we were halfway through shooting, almost to the day and about two weeks from going to Italy to shoot this opening car chase, which had been scouted and prepped. Then the world shut down, which ultimately led to us leading to us to shutting down production. It was a long six months of not knowing anything..."
Shooting resumed on Red Notice in September 2020 under the new health and safety protocols put into place for movies and TV shows throughout the health crisis. As Thurber recounted, he had to spend much of the remaining 45 days of filming (which he said turned into 90 days when adding weekends and prep) in isolation during his off-hours. "That was the real challenge, being away from my family, completely isolated and go through my six-day work week," he added. As a result, Thurber also had to rewrite the movie's opening car chase in Italy "to now fit our new reality."
Dwayne Johnson stars in Red Notice as John Hartley, an FBI profiler who begrudgingly joins forces with infamous art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) to take down Sarah Black (Gal Gadot), an up-and-coming crook code-named The Bishop. Thurber confirmed that COVID-19 is the reason another character crashes into John in the movie's opening, preventing said car chase from ensuing. "That’s exactly why we did that way, and I actually think it ended working out better for the movie," he added.
Red Notice holds a "Rotten" critics score of 44 percent after its first 66 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with the average rating coming in at 4.9/10. Its critics consensus reads, "Red Notice's big budget and A-list cast add up to a slickly competent action comedy whose gaudy ingredients only make the middling results more disappointing."
Like a growing number of Netflix Originals, Red Notice has received a theatrical run in the U.S., playing in as many as 750 theaters. It begins streaming Nov. 12.
Source: Deadline
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