Warcraft movie MEGA THREAD

[Relapses]

I fail to see the issue, as you could always produce a blockbuster in the US then export it in China (just as they did with warcraft).

What I'd be interested to know, though, is how that movie became so popular in china.

The movie's popularity in China is pretty easy to explain. Gaming in China is far more culturally accepted. Olympic stadiums in the east are often filled to the brim with eSports fans. (Seriously, check out League of Legends event from 2014.) While the movie was seen as yet another cog in the Hollywood video game moviemaking machine here in the US, it was seen as a representation of a cultural phenomena (akin to Star Wars) in China.

[Vulgrym]

There impressed because it cost 40M. Made 90M in less time and from what it seems was a better put together movie story wise in comparrison to warcraft and can you really be shocked warcraft made the bulk of it's money from China? The same fanatical group that love warcraft so much they built an illegal theme park based off it. Basically telling blizzard to go screw themselves. IF there was one place in the world they didn't have to worry about warcraft ticket sales, it was China - The number is impressive but not shocking or interesting.

No, actually they're impressed with the domestic take. When outlets report weekend performance, it's always "how much did it gross". Here is a typical example:

http://cinemanerdz.com/box-office-we...n-competition/

The hyperbole in that 'weekend summary' style report is typical (i.e. in this case "Conjuring Sequel Slams Door on Competition"). It's cute and, as the Chan article alludes, becoming less relevant. Domestic box office is such an incomplete picture, reporting numbers in that fashion is pretty much worthless. Warcraft will get sequels because of how well it did globally, not just in China. It did $262M globally and $156M in China.

That the US is an afterthought for some of these movies (i.e. Pacific Rim, Fast & Furious, Warcraft) is the interesting phenomenon at play here.

For the person who was wondering how this was so huge in China, here's some insight into the planning and marketing that went into that launch:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0803096/news

And I'm not sure where people are getting the $500M budget from, but the figure that was made public was $160M. The article above goes into how some of the costs were shared (eg. $30M kicked into marketing efforts by Chinese partners).

tl;dr, this is going to be wildly profitable despite American disinterest and it reinforces a trend that suggests you don't need to be successful in the US to make a buttload of money off of a hollywood movie.

[TheTaurenOrc]

And I'm not sure where people are getting the $500M budget from, but the figure that was made public was $160M. The article above goes into how some of the costs were shared (eg. $30M kicked into marketing efforts by Chinese partners).

tl;dr, this is going to be wildly profitable despite American disinterest and it reinforces a trend that suggests you don't need to be successful in the US to make a buttload of money off of a hollywood movie.

$500M is not the budget, its being used as a target to recover the total costs (production and marketing).

I dont know how many times it has to be said, theaters arn't doing this for free. They have there own cut; typically 50% of the box office. So in short take the total cost double it and thats a very close estimate as to how much the box office needs to take for the studio to just break even.

[Aori]

Oh man <$25M opening weekend... this is bad, really bad. Theaters are going to drop this fast; I wouldn't be surprised if its gone before the end of the month.

Theatres dropped it before opening weekend because of critic review. A lot of theatres also slashed the amount of showings it was getting as well before opening weekend. I wish there was a site to see how many showtimes movies had, that would be a better indicator to see how well a movie was doing. Availability plays a large role in what movie people see if any as well.

[quras]

No, actually they're impressed with the domestic take. When outlets report weekend performance, it's always "how much did it gross". Here is a typical example:

http://cinemanerdz.com/box-office-we...n-competition/

The hyperbole in that 'weekend summary' style report is typical (i.e. in this case "Conjuring Sequel Slams Door on Competition"). It's cute and, as the Chan article alludes, becoming less relevant. Domestic box office is such an incomplete picture, reporting numbers in that fashion is pretty much worthless. Warcraft will get sequels because of how well it did globally, not just in China. It did $262M globally and $156M in China.

That the US is an afterthought for some of these movies (i.e. Pacific Rim, Fast & Furious, Warcraft) is the interesting phenomenon at play here.

But sadly that sequel isn't a guarentee no matter how much it does globably if the studios ROI doesn't warrant it. There not in the game to make jsut a couple million. There looking for a huge return on that investment (not losing any money is still great though)

Currently 286 million isn't high enough no matter the global reception. Especially when it comes to games to movies. Many game to movies did well internationally but will still never get a sequel. Prince of Persia comes to mind. They just didn't do well enough. It's possible warcraft will fall into that same hole. Also possible it might not but right now, it's hard to tell if warcraft has the stamina to hold out for the next weeks with Finding Dory and ID:R.

For the person who was wondering how this was so huge in China, here's some insight into the planning and marketing that went into that launch:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0803096/news

And I'm not sure where people are getting the $500M budget from, but the figure that was made public was $160M. The article above goes into how some of the costs were shared (eg. $30M kicked into marketing efforts by Chinese partners).

tl;dr, this is going to be wildly profitable despite American disinterest and it reinforces a trend that suggests you don't need to be successful in the US to make a buttload of money off of a hollywood movie.

People are getting that 500M from movie standards. That being take teh budget of the movie plus marketing and double it. Personally, I know there is a bit more to it than that but that has always been a rough idea for what a movie needs to make to break even. We know that at a 160m budget and almost 100M A&P we get about 260 M spent. They need to make 500+M to reach a very plausible break even point.

If you want to get a bit more technical you can read this.
https://storyality.wordpress.com/201...on-investment/

It's been used for the past few years.

warcraft being wildly profitable is still yet to be determined. 286M isn't it and American disinterest still plays a huge part in the profits. While international markets can help hugly to offset being in the red. A mediocre reception in American markets can still very much hurt a film.

[Trollderpistan]

I dont know how many times it has to be said, theaters arn't doing this for free. They have there own cut; typically 50% of the box office

That is not accurate. Theaters get the least amount of money from a film during the first week of release. I can go up from there, but they are likely taking only 10% of the sales on week one, and it might not even be that high. Theaters make a bulk of their operating costs off of selling you over-priced food and drink.

[quras]

That is not accurate. Theaters get the least amount of money from a film during the first week of release. I can go up from there, but they are likely taking only 10% of the sales on week one, and it might not even be that high. Theaters make a bulk of their operating costs off of selling you over-priced food and drink.

This is correct but like you said, only on week one. Most are on a sliding scale and by week 3 or so they are at a 50% ticket loss. You also have to worry about what kind of deal is made for riskier films. Sometimes that is also under contract to protect the theater from bomb movies.

I pulled this quote on that:

"These deals often protect the theaters from movies that bomb at the box office by giving the theaters a bigger cut of those films. So if a film only makes $10 million at the box office, the distributor will get only 45 percent of that money. But if a film makes $300 million at the box office, then the distributor gets up to 60 percent of that money."

Most of it is on a scale. There is a lot more in play than snacks.

[clevin]

The theaters in China are, for the most part, owned by the studio that produced this. So, in this case, you can't say anything intelligent about how bog the global theater cut is unless you have inside info. Which none of you have, so stop pretending.

PS: right now, Warcraft is in the 11th spot in worldwide box-office for 2016 and likely will go higher since its early in its run. aside from a couple of movies, everything else above it is HUGE and the superhero films are all sequels to insanely successful franchises.

I doubt there's any way the studio isn't satisfied with this over all, even though they would have liked a better US opening I'd bet.

[Jokubas]

An opinion cannot be dishonest. Critics rated the movie by the same standards which all films are rated. The critical consensus is that it's a popcorn flick with very little appeal to anybody other than the movie's target demographic: People who played the game. I don't understand the desire to vilify critics for simply doing their jobs.

It can be dishonest when it's not actually their opinion of the quality of the work. A lot of critics base their review on things like this on the genre itself, or in this case, the fact that it's based on a video game. There have been some infamous reviews that don't even talk about the work itself. That's not doing their job. That's having a preconceived notion about something and deciding to stereotype it based on that, rather than its own merit.

For what it's worth, I actually got my dad to see the movie. He's not a gamer, he's not big on fantasy, and he knows nothing about Warcraft. He loved the movie. He liked it more than Force Awakens, and he's actually familiar with Star Wars. Similarly, my oldest brother is a more casual gamer and isn't that familiar with Warcraft, and he was able to follow what was going on and enjoyed it, and even seems to be getting into Warcraft now.

(I'm not trying to say that it's guaranteed that people will like it who aren't Warcraft players, but it's proof that it's not an automatic dislike.)

[Gamevizier]

I really don't understand what the movie bashers were expecting a "warcraft" movie to be. It's not like the game itself has any deep, well-written story like LOTR. the movie is not supposed to be like LOTR, or be as deep as 2000 Space Odyssey. It's supposed to be a summer flick, that's supposed to get an audience familiar with the Warcraft universe, and please the fans who already know the story.

You can hate the movie all you want, but bashing a movie for not being something that it didn't even intended to be is an idiotic thing to do. in a world where Transformers can get this many sequels while being an utter piece of garbage, Warcraft movies can exist to for the sole purpose of entertainment. I don't expect them to win oscars (maybe for CGI) but I don't think they care about that.

[Thimagryn]

What I think hurts the idea of a sequel is that it'd prolly have to be an even bigger budget film with an equally big marketting cost. This series has a ton of potential for sequels, especially in the international market, but hard to say if Legendary and Universal will back the idea.

[Nathreim]

An opinion cannot be dishonest. Critics rated the movie by the same standards which all films are rated. The critical consensus is that it's a popcorn flick with very little appeal to anybody other than the movie's target demographic: People who played the game. I don't understand the desire to vilify critics for simply doing their jobs.

It's unfortunate that the result of that has been a poor domestic performance for the film but it doesn't mean we should boycott or disparage people who are simply grading the movie by a metric which you disagree with.

It can be when its paid for.

[Tackhisis]

I can see why it does well in Germany, Russia and such: the dubbing masks the awful performances at least partially. If you are a native English speaker, it becomes intolerable.

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I really don't understand what the movie bashers were expecting a "warcraft" movie to be.

I was expecting an A-rating movie, not something that looks like something made somewhere in Lithuania with a fraction of $160M.

[Huehuecoyotl]

It can be when its paid for.

So talk me through how this whole "paying for bad reviews" thing works. Who pays for them? What have they got to gain from getting bad reviews for a movie that (presumably) isn't theirs?

Paying for good reviews, sure, I will agree that is a possibility. But paying for bad ones, when there is nothing to gain for anyone, is real tin-foil hat territory.

But feel free to prove me wrong. Talk me through the scenario where someone, somewhere, is paying masses of movie reviewers to talk down this film.

[Eapoe]

An opinion cannot be dishonest. Critics rated the movie by the same standards which all films are rated. The critical consensus is that it's a popcorn flick with very little appeal to anybody other than the movie's target demographic: People who played the game. I don't understand the desire to vilify critics for simply doing their jobs.

It's unfortunate that the result of that has been a poor domestic performance for the film but it doesn't mean we should boycott or disparage people who are simply grading the movie by a metric which you disagree with.

An opinion can be dishonest if paid for. Now, I'm not saying that happened, but there have been rumors about reviews being paid to give a good or bad review and can, in fact, happen. Opinions can also be biased along the lines of people that have been jaded by videogame movies in the past easily writing off future ones without putting much thought into the movie itself and just stating an opinion based off the genre itself. Also, when someone's profession is to give detailed info about a movie, even if they in fact liked it, can feel pressure to give an honest review for standing out and not being taken as a professional if they feel that others are going to say it's a horrible movie.
Again, I'm not saying this is what happened here, but is merely food for thought and I look forward to critics down the road taking a second look at the movie and seeing how much opinions have changed, especially when other countries that are praised for their art and cultural movies are enjoying it as much as they have been.

[Deleted]

So talk me through how this whole "paying for bad reviews" thing works. Who pays for them? What have they got to gain from getting bad reviews for a movie that (presumably) isn't theirs?

Paying for good reviews, sure, I will agree that is a possibility. But paying for bad ones, when there is nothing to gain for anyone, is real tin-foil hat territory.

But feel free to prove me wrong. Talk me through the scenario where someone, somewhere, is paying masses of movie reviewers to talk down this film.

The mmo-champ forum Blizzard haters had a Kickstarter for this very purpose. Did you miss it? It seems it was very successful.

[Gamevizier]

I can see why it does well in Germany, Russia and such: the dubbing masks the awful performances at least partially. If you are a native English speaker, it becomes intolerable.

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I was expecting an A-rating movie, not something that looks like something made somewhere in Lithuania with a fraction of $160M.

So far most of the criticism regarding the movie are about the fast pace of the story and the large number of characters in it. So no, excuse me for calling BS on your criticism regarding the quality of the cgi.

[Gadzooks]

$500M is not the budget, its being used as a target to recover the total costs (production and marketing).

I dont know how many times it has to be said, theaters arn't doing this for free. They have there own cut; typically 50% of the box office. So in short take the total cost double it and thats a very close estimate as to how much the box office needs to take for the studio to just break even.

Couple of things -

Theaters get a sliding scale for their cut - the least amount is typically the first weekend, where they get 20, 25% (or less). That's why the first weekend is so important from a studio standpoint. Each week the percentages change, and after a month (if a movie is still playing at this point), the theaters are getting 80, 90, even 100% of ticket sales, but ticket sales are so low at this point, they're forced to sell you $5 candy bars and $10 nachos. That rental fee has to get paid!

Doubling is a bit much - the calculation I've always heard is they spend 50% of the production budget to market a movie. And, the studio that makes the movie, and the distributor aren't always the same company, as it is in Warcraft's case. Hollywood accounting is like voodoo - poorly understood, and impossibly arcane. The production payback is a different line item than recouping marketing costs. Different entities get different places in line for their payoff. Money is shifted around and manipulated.

I think what the reviewers are doing is a sneaky form of passive aggression - they're combining all of the distriubtors world-wide, and their calculated (estimated) costs for marketing, and making a big lump sum of 4-500 million for the movie to break even. $340 million to recoup a $160 million dollar movie? That's pure horseshit, even if you don't like the movie. Warcraft had medium levels of ad buys and marketing, their campaign was a lot softer than I expected - and definitly not a $300 million dollar campaign.

I think the US distributor (Universal) will do just fine here, and the movie can be considered a mild success. Not a blockbuster, but it will profit and pay for itself before it goes to cable and streaming and disk sales. Foreign distributors may not recoup, but that's the gamble they took. SO far China is doing well, and the EU looks solid. We'll see how South America does, and then the secondary and tertiary markets do.

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So talk me through how this whole "paying for bad reviews" thing works. Who pays for them? What have they got to gain from getting bad reviews for a movie that (presumably) isn't theirs?

Paying for good reviews, sure, I will agree that is a possibility. But paying for bad ones, when there is nothing to gain for anyone, is real tin-foil hat territory.

But feel free to prove me wrong. Talk me through the scenario where someone, somewhere, is paying masses of movie reviewers to talk down this film.

I've heard rumors of competing studios doing slimy things like paying reviewers to tank their competition's movie. Or, you know, "If you call that other studio's movie playing against ours a flop, we'll give you early access to the next blockbuster we have coming out, plus a weekend at a ritzy hotel will all comps so you can see it in our VIP theater" kind of thing. It's Hollywood - if your reaction is "No way they'd do that!", that means they've been doing that for years.

Hollywood is one of the most corrupt industries ever. I've seen some beyond shady shit personally, on the fringes of it - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. But the profits are so big, and the egos so big, everyone is fine with it.

[Deleted]

So far most of the criticism regarding the movie are about the fast pace of the story and the large number of characters in it. So no, excuse me for calling BS on your criticism regarding the quality of the cgi.

And bad dialogues, and sloppy acting ... but that's also mostly due to the pacing issue and the fact they don't focus on less characters. For a 2 hours movie, it is just too much.

I've heard rumors of competing studios doing slimy things like paying reviewers to tank their competition's movie. Or, you know, "If you call that other studio's movie playing against ours a flop, we'll give you early access to the next blockbuster we have coming out, plus a weekend at a ritzy hotel will all comps so you can see it in our VIP theater" kind of thing. It's Hollywood - if your reaction is "No way they'd do that!", that means they've been doing that for years.

Hollywood is one of the most corrupt industries ever. I've seen some beyond shady shit personally, on the fringes of it - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. But the profits are so big, and the egos so big, everyone is fine with it.

To be honest I don't really think the reviewers were paid to give bad reviews to the movie, as it isn't a very good one. But as I already said countless time, you can still like it.

How many fantasy movies are you seeing currently in theater ? There aren't much. So the idea that a competing studio paid reviewers to bring down the movie is kinda silly.

[Fabinas]

We also have to consider the age brackets of the viewers. Younger ages will have no difficulty catching up to the story and characters, while older ages will demand more background and less cgi.