What The Rock’s big box office bomb tells us about our needs and desires at Christmas

Dwayne Johnson's latest film, Red One , has been playing in cinemas since mid-November .

It was conceived as the first instalment of a Christmas -themed action franchise.

The film currently has a score of 31% on Rotten Tomatoes , and opened to poor box office numbers.

Some analysts have predicted it will make a loss in the region of US$100 million ( 78 million ).

They remind us of the ghosts of Christmas movies past that big film studios seem unable or unwilling to make today . The movie industry needs to think hard about the kinds of films it hopes to contribute to the Christmas film tradition in future. But we too need to accept that we might be asking Hollywood for something that even Santa would struggle to deliver. Alexander Sergeant is Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster .