Everybody wanted Red Notice. The Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson film, produced and developed by Johnson’s own production company, was itself something like the third Cleopatra egg it depicts—a multi-million-dollar treasure sought by multiple parties, including Universal, Warner Bros., and Sony. Ultimately, it went to Netflix.
Alongside its stars, the film carried the attractive premise of art thievery and international heist drama: three masterminds attempt to steal all three eggs once owned by the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Everyone wants the eggs, and everyone wanted the film where everyone wants the eggs.
But what of the eggs? The film tells of three bejeweled eggs, which Roman general Mark Antony gave to Cleopatra on their wedding day. The opening of Red Notice shows historical paintings and newsreels featuring the wedding exchange and the unearthing of two eggs during an archeological dig sometime in the mid twentieth century. The mystery: the third egg, rumored to have once existed, has never been found.
Sounds legit. Is it legit?
Are Cleopatra’s eggs real?
Much like Interpol having their own gun-wielding agents to collect them, Cleopatra’s eggs are utter fiction.
A Red Notice producer and the President of Production at Dwayne Johnson’s Seven Bucks Productions, Hiram Garcia, told TheWrap in an interview that the grail quest in the film was the invention of writer and director Rawson Marshall Thurber.
“One of the funniest things about the pitch as we took it around town is [Thurber] had come up with the whole setup that you hear at the top of the movie, and during the pitch he has an amazing setup where he does this fascinating little trip through history. He’s telling you about the time and Cleopatra to really set up the Macguffin of the movie. At the end of the pitch the same thing always came up which was, ‘I had no idea about the whole Cleopatra thing,’ and with great comedic timing he always said, ‘Oh I just made all that up.’ It has such a well-conceived backstory that you wish they were real, but no they were totally made up. It’s a very fun idea he had come up with.”
The pitch was apparently so tantalizing that every production company wanted in on the film. Netflix made off with the bejeweled franchise—every part of it fiction.
There is, however, some records of pearl earrings worn by Cleopatra. A story tells of Cleopatra making a bet with Antony about how much she could spend on a single lavish dinner. She wins by dissolving one of her pearl earrings and eating it. The other earring was apparently saved and split into two. (It’s unclear how much of this story is true or what became of the pearls.)
As far as eggs, there do exist several bejeweled eggs first commissioned by the Romanov family in 1885 and given to successive Czars and their wives. The eggs were taken and hidden following the Russian Revolution. Many are currently on display in New York, London, St. Petersburg, and elsewhere. There are, however, several eggs still missing.
Why weren’t these eggs the basis for Red Notice’s heist? Perhaps there were too many. Perhaps their history was too modern. Perhaps filming in Russia was too expensive.
