Warcraft: The Beginning was a great success everywhere, but in the USA, the Warcraft movie was a giant flop. Therefore, in the end, 15 million dollars were lost. So is there really no sequel coming?
With the Warcraft movie Warcraft: The Beginning, one would expect a sequel just from the title alone. But given the bare numbers, this is not as certain as previously assumed. Because overall, the revenues of the Warcraft movie did not even cover the production and marketing costs. Overall, reports say the revenues are around 15 million dollars below the film’s budget of 160 million US dollars. Nevertheless, the Warcraft movie is still the most successful video game adaptation!
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The blame for the loss lies with the miserable revenues of the film in the USA. Out of the already 430 million US dollars total revenues (the film company only gets a fraction of that), a mere 46.6 million came from the USA, the country of origin of the underlying game. A whopping 89 percent of the total revenues came from outside the US, where the film performed significantly better, with China boasting a hefty 221 million US dollars as the lion’s share. This is actually more than half of the film’s total revenues!
There are worse candidates for sequels than Warcraft: The Beginning
But what do these numbers mean for a possible sequel to the epic? According to analyst Jeff Bock, a loss of 15 million dollars is not a complete disaster: “Warcraft is a strange box office monster and completely different from anything we’ve seen in the industry so far. If it weren’t for China contributing to its total, it would have been a complete disaster. Now it’s merely a slight concussion.”
Relevant to the topic: The WoW movie from a fan’s perspective & The WoW movie from a non-WoW player’s perspective
Is there still hope for a sequel? According to Bock, absolutely, as there are worse examples that received a sequel despite poor numbers, such as the sequel to Pacific Rim. Warcraft director Duncan Jones would be up for a sequel and already has ideas. So, let’s hope that the film performs well enough in home video to finally get a sequel. The same goes for the 40-minute longer edition of the film.
We at Mein-MMO really liked the film, both my colleague Cortyn as a WoW fan and I, who has less to do with Warcraft. Would you be happy about a sequel to the work, or do you think the orc epic was so bad that it doesn’t deserve another chance? Let us know in the comments!
