Warcraft Rocks China

dmm02

Hate it all you want 

"But the North American market is essentially gravy for Warcraft. China leads the way as the most critical territory for this film and will probably contribute more than half of the final global gross. With a Wednesday holiday launch, the orc pic grossed a staggering $156M in its first five days there putting it about even with last summer’s Furious 7 which set all-time industry records at the time on its way to a jaw-dropping $391M final there. The game has been immensely popular in that country and the casting of Chinese-American actor Daniel Wu (who got the ‘and’ credit) helped. 292 IMAX screens in China delivered a robust $20M as the visual effects made it a prime movie to experience in a premium format.

Other international markets have contributed $105.7M to date. Add in China and North America and theWarcraft global cume now stands at $286.1M and climbing rapidly. Produced for $160M, the final global gross could approach the $600M mark with a whopping 85-90% coming from outside North America."

Despite all the negative criticism in NA Warcraft seems to be doing just fine and looks rather profitable 

May or may not be a terrible movie (Went in expecting very little came out thinking it was decent but I also played WoW for years) 

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/box-office-conjuring-2-hits-1-warcraft-rocks-china/   link to article

SBFord

While I generally agree with the author's post, profits won't be nearly so high as the advertising probably doubled, if not tripled, the production costs. Still, it should make enough money worldwide to warrant a second chapter and, if they're smart, it'll be released in China first. They earned it.

gervaise1

Articles suggest it needs to gross $500M - so sub-$200M to go now. US will add little though.

From boxofficemojo: 
underperformed based on what is expected from a film carrying a $160 million production budget. With an estimated $24.35 million weekend, the video game adaptation only managed $7,164 per theater and saw a 27.1% drop from its $10.7 million opening day (which included $3.1 million from Thursday previews) to Saturday

Really comes down to China.

Does the box office reflect the current WoW playerbase?

Volgore

The success in China shouldn't surprise anyone and doesn't tell anything about the movie's quality.
It's rather telling that despite this great IP they didn't manage to make a movie that hits more than mediocre boxoffice numbers in the US or EU. But i guess unlike the profound chinese audience, the US and EU people just don't get it.

Blizzard should just go and include kungfu pandas in the next warcraft movie and release it in china only. Fine by me. Wouldn't be the first time they sell out their IP to cater to the asian market after western people dumped the title due to their higher quality expectations.

Solar_Prophet

All the slave laborers (paid so little they may as well be) and political prisoners (those not harvested for organs or forced to farm WoW gold) building those fake islands in the South China Sea have to be entertained by something I guess. 

"They earned it..." Oh boy, they've earned the privilege of seeing sub-par Hollywood trash before us. What an honor. Truly. I suppose they'll get to see the Ghostbusters sequel before us, too. Bummer. 

scorpex-x

I loved the film, I don't care about the film making profits outside of my own selfish desire to see not only more of this but more films based on games in general.

When these films do poorly it just convinces the whole industry that movies based on games aren't worth the time, just as has happened with the enture mmorpg industry.  I want this to do well and I want the assassins creed one to do well.

gervaise1

scorpex-x said:

<snip>
When these films do poorly it just convinces the whole industry that movies based on games aren't worth the time <snip>

True.
Also true: multiple sequels this year have seen "soft revenue". Not as crucial for e.g. US weekend number 1 Conjuring 2 @ $40M; and its actually done as well (already at $90M worldwide).

So if I was Blizzard my solution for Warcraft 2 would be:

Writer, Director, Producer, Composer : Stephen Chow (but see note below);
Studio: Hengdian World Studio;
Budget: on a par with Chow's 2016 The Mermaid @ $60M;
Language Chinese;
Filmed in: China.

Release in China; sub-titles for the international release - which probably won't harm the international box office that much.

Sadly I doubt that Chow would do it. He would almost certainly want to add humour so he would probably go the way of Sam Mendez.  If he accepted though it should be huge. (For those unaware Warcraft has a long way to go before it comes close to The Mermaid at the box office). 

filmoret

Those numbers look and sound good when writing a story.  Hate to reveal such sad info but this movie needs to gross 500 million just to break even.  The NA market is so bad on this movie its almost a shame.  Unless this movie grosses over 1.5 billion then you won't see a sequel.

Horusra

filmoret said:

Those numbers look and sound good when writing a story.  Hate to reveal such sad info but this movie needs to gross 500 million just to break even.  The NA market is so bad on this movie its almost a shame.  Unless this movie grosses over 1.5 billion then you won't see a sequel.

First captain America cost $150 mill to make and only made $370 worldwide....Glad we never saw another one of those......

josko9

With the budget it was made, and the marketing they've used, you'd expect this movie to easily break past 1 billion. Yet conjuring 2 which cost 40mil to make is wiping the floor with it.

If China wouldn't rescue them, they would't even break 300mil, which is a disaster. China will end with more than 50% of total gross. I can only imagine how much was marketing in China, it had to be over 100mil there alone.

Warcraft is not a success by any means. This movie will need more than China to get a sequel.

Also some of you have no idea how important domestic gross actually is. Even domestically movies get barely 50% back, internationally they are lucky if they get 25% back. That's why it's way more important to do well domestically. So let's say Warcraft makes about 200-250mil total in China? That means only 50-60mil for the studio. 

In NA it won't make more than 60mil, so that's 30mil. Internationally it needs to make 520mil, to bring in the remaining 130mil, which means that Warcraft needs 600mil to just break even.

"Break even" on production costs, the latest information is that the marketing was 110mil. This means 270mil expenses. There is no way Warcraft will make that much.

Horusra

josko9 said:

With the budget it was made, and the marketing they've used, you'd expect this movie to easily break past 1 billion. Yet conjuring 2 which costed 40mil is wiping the floor with it.

If China wouldn't rescue them, they would't even break 300mil, which is a disaster. China will end with more than 50% of total gross. I can only imagine how much was marketing in China, it had to be over 100mil there alone.

Warcraft is not a success by any means. This movie will need more than China to get a sequel.

$286 mill so far...I bet they break $300 million

Akulas

The ads on my tv will probably subtract an amount from that total.

SirAgravaine

I really enjoyed the film and hope it is successful both domestically and globally. I would like to see see more installments of the Warcraft franchise on the silver screen ^^

Asm0deus

These companies need to stop paying so much for advertising, I mean really advertise on youtube or something.  The only advert for this I saw was from facebook, which was a youtube vid, showing the trailer and maybe this site..that's it.

If a film has a 160m budget and grosses over 280mil it should be a go and flopping because they put  over 100mil in adverts is just eh in this day and age where everyone is connected online vie laptops cell phones etc

rodingo

Well I know I will contribute another $15-30 towards their domestic take this coming weekend.  I'm sure I will enjoy it more than the recent X-Men movie.

Ginaz

filmoret said:

Those numbers look and sound good when writing a story.  Hate to reveal such sad info but this movie needs to gross 500 million just to break even.  The NA market is so bad on this movie its almost a shame.  Unless this movie grosses over 1.5 billion then you won't see a sequel.

1.5 BILLION???  Are you insane?  It doesn't need to make that much to get a sequel.  I'm not saying it will get a sequel but it doesn't need to make that much.  The Marvel movies cost more than this to make.  If Warcraft makes $500 million than they will probably at least break even, maybe even make a healthy profit.

Ginaz

josko9 said:

With the budget it was made, and the marketing they've used, you'd expect this movie to easily break past 1 billion. Yet conjuring 2 which cost 40mil to make is wiping the floor with it.

If China wouldn't rescue them, they would't even break 300mil, which is a disaster. China will end with more than 50% of total gross. I can only imagine how much was marketing in China, it had to be over 100mil there alone.

Warcraft is not a success by any means. This movie will need more than China to get a sequel.

Also some of you have no idea how important domestic gross actually is. Even domestically movies get barely 50% back, internationally they are lucky if they get 25% back. That's why it's way more important to do well domestically. So let's say Warcraft makes about 200-250mil total in China? That means only 50-60mil for the studio. 

In NA it won't make more than 60mil, so that's 30mil. Internationally it needs to make 520mil, to bring in the remaining 130mil, which means that Warcraft needs 600mil to just break even.

"Break even" on production costs, the latest information is that the marketing was 110mil. This means 270mil expenses. There is no way Warcraft will make that much.

Can you actually provide any proof of what you just said, or are you just pulling it out of...thin air?  We can speculate all we want, but you really can't back up anything you wrote. 

Just in case you think I'm some sort of fanboy, the movie was ok and I enjoyed it but I found it very uneven and inconsistent, esp. the parts involving the humans.  Not as bad as it's being made out to be but not really memorable, either.

winghaven1

Budget for Warcraft Movie = 160 mil.
Box Office for Warcraft Movie = 286.1 mil.

Even if the marketing was costly the new subscribers to their WoW mmorpg (which they issued for free 1st month) will easily pay for that eventually. 

filmoret

winghaven1 said:

Budget for Warcraft Movie = 160 mil.
Box Office for Warcraft Movie = 286.1 mil.

Even if the marketing was costly the new subscribers to their WoW mmorpg (which they issued for free 1st month) will easily pay for that eventually. 

Why do people think they get 100% of the box office gross?  So the movie theatre that charged 14$ for that ticket doesn't get anything.  The chain the threatre is from doesn't get any of that money.  The government doesn't touch the money either.  Then you cross over from several different countries and they decided they don't want any of that money.  Not to mention the cost to simply enter the country in the first place.  Yea josko is right they don't get very much of that money which is why they need aprox 500 mil just to break even with foreign sales the way they are.    They will need to make at least 100 mil for them to even consider a sequel.  Unless they have box office connections like Paramount and Universal Studios then they have a hard road for this to happen.  

ShrikeArghast

Hooray... one of the world's last enslaved peoples can't tell the difference between a good movie and a box office bomb. Given their brainwashing, are we supposed to be cheering, or golfclapping, or what?