I KNEW the movie would flop

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

You did mention profits though, that's the part that would fly over his head.

Profits don't enter into it though...these are just box office numbers. He said Warcraft made twice what BvS made. That's demonstrably false.

872 milllion > 421 million

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Movie didn't flop in My Eyes because I enjoyed it quite a lot, and that's what matters to me. It'll definitely be a must by on DVD even though I barely ever watch DVDs.

The term "Flop" has nothing to do with whether or not you enjoyed the movie. Flop means the movie did not earn enough to make up for it's production and marketing costs.

[Drutt]

Hollywood accounting is notoriously sketchy. If you believe the accountants, virtually no films ever make a profit.

It's virtually certain the movie made a healthy wedge for those involved in making it, and a sequel seems quite likely. The publicly stated budget is almost certainly inflated and completely removed from the actual cost of making the film.

[Onikaroshi]

Profits don't enter into it though...these are just box office numbers. He said Warcraft made twice what BvS made. That's demonstrably false.

872 milllion > 421 million

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The term "Flop" has nothing to do with whether or not you enjoyed the movie. Flop means the movie did not earn enough to make up for it's production and marketing costs.

All that matters is what the individual thinks, who cares if they don't make a sequel. I would like them to yes, but it would not be the end of the world if they don't. To me Super Mario Bros. didn't flop, I still enjoy the living hell out of that movie.

Money is not everything, some movies in the past have "flopped" but have become such classics that people look at you funny if you didn't watch them.

What it comes down to is who cares if it made money? Did you like it? If yes, it was good, if no, it wasn't your kind of movie. THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS!

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

All that matters is what the individual thinks, who cares if they don't make a sequel. I would like them to yes, but it would not be the end of the world if they don't. To me Super Mario Bros. didn't flop, I still enjoy the living hell out of that movie.

Money is not everything, some movies in the past have "flopped" but have become such classics that people look at you funny if you didn't watch them.

What it comes down to is who cares if it made money? Did you like it? If yes, it was good, if no, it wasn't your kind of movie. THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS!

What the individual thinks doesn't matter at all as far as studios are concerned. They are concerned with the movie making them more money than it cost them to make it.

If you want to see more Warcraft movies...then whether or not it made the studio money should matter to you very much....because they don't care how good or bad a movie is...all they care about is money. If it makes them lots of money...they'll make a sequel. If it ends up costing them money...they won't.

The Transformers movies are all shit...but they keep on making money so the studio will keep on making sequels.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I understand the point, he already acknowledged his error in that area. My point is that you brought profits into the discussion and any mention of that will go over his head. See what I'm saying?

But what I am saying is that I never brought profit into the discussion. I only brought in Box Office Numbers...that's just revenue. Profits are what's left after costs are subtracted from revenue.

[Count Zero]

Hollywood accounting is notoriously sketchy. If you believe the accountants, virtually no films ever make a profit.

Yep. Taxes and all that.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Uh, please read what you wrote again. Before you ever started talking about numbers you used the words, as I quoted, profit-wise. That's bringing profit into the discussion.

Ah okay...you have me there. That was a bit of poor phrasing on my part. I should have said "performance-wise" instead of "profit-wise". It was not my intention to discuss actual profits though...merely the revenue each film provided.

[Zoldor]

Batman v Superman made over twice what Warcraft made and was still considered to be a disappointment profit-wise.


Batman v Superman

Budget: $250 Mil

Domestic: $330,360,194 37.9%
+ Foreign: $542,302,437 62.1%

= Worldwide: $872,662,631

Warcraft:

Budget: $160 Mil

Domestic: $45,779,925 10.8%
+ Foreign: $376,200,000 89.2%

= Worldwide: $421,979,925

It is a disappointment profit-wise because both Batman and Superman are established film franchises with decades of viewership and fans globally and the two most prominent super heroes. Anything less than a billion is profit disappointment. They expected to topple Marvel Cinematic Universe with this film, and instead it was a mediocre movie that made money, but not the giant paycheck you would expect. These films aren't anywhere near the same realm of comparison for franchises. They were expecting something closer to the 1billion to 1.1 that a film like Civil War did. They wanted this one to rocket ship an entire 8+ film set from the DCU. Not just one sequel, this film was supposed to support Suicide Squad, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, JL etc. It is a totally different set of expectations, and they had a comparable point of comparison with a direct rival in the MCU. Stop this dumb comparison between BvS and Warcraft.

Iron Man made like 580 with a 140 budget. That would be a more appropriate, but even still Comic films and their following is going to be larger than a movie based on a video game, and the most boring part of the video game lore. The WC1 story is weak and less fun than the WC2 or 3. Smart thing would have been starting with WC3.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Stop this dumb comparison between BvS and Warcraft.

I wasn't the one that brought up the comparison

[Wenoxar]

Movie was pretty legit

[Icecreamcake]

Great prediction OP

[JTHMRulez1]

I must say that the comparation between BvS and Warcraft is pretty dumb. Not saying it for you Sicari. But for the person who brought it up.

[Tackhisis]

The irony is that if the producers hadn't waste the budget on expensive CGI, most of which was cut out, but instead hired better actors, better extras and stunts to have more interactive action scenes and convincing acting, it would probably break even, even with the same budget. It is 2016, and people want more than TV series actors who phone it in, terrible wigs, terrible props, bad chromakey, cartoonish fighting... They didn't even have enough money to make CGI background action to be fully animated - it is jerky and lo-res.

Jones didn't know how to handle the budget of such size. Jones didn't know how to work with the large cast. Jones was appointed just because of old boys' club.

[Ironhorn]

The irony is that if the producers hadn't waste the budget on expensive CGI, most of which was cut out, but instead hired better actors, better extras and stunts to have more interactive action scenes and convincing acting, it would probably break even, even with the same budget. It is 2016, and people want more than TV series actors who phone it in, terrible wigs, terrible props, bad chromakey, cartoonish fighting... They didn't even have enough money to make CGI background action to be fully animated - it is jerky and lo-res.

Jones didn't know how to handle the budget of such size. Jones didn't know how to work with the large cast. Jones was appointed just because of old boys' club.

The movie has already turned a profit though. Don't believe that BS that it has to clear 500 million in reality all movies cost far less than what "experts" say. If you listen to them Lord of the Rings never turned a profit.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...ofitable.shtml

Here's a hypothetical example of how this could work in practice, using round numbers just to make the point (these aren't directly accurate numbers, but the concept is). A studio funds A Movie with a production budget of $100 million. It sets up AMovieCo Inc. and gives it the production budget money. The studio then spends another $50 million on marketing and puts that down as an expense as well -- though, with some of the big studios, some of this money involves paying itself for advertising on its own properties. Still, even if we assume that's real money spent, you might think that AMovieCo now needs to make back $150 million to be profitable. But... the studio (which, again, controls AMovieCo completely) then tacks onto all of that, say, a $250 million "distribution fee." Now, while there may be some money spent on actually distributing the film, the number is almost completely bogus, and much higher than the actual expense for the studio. Very little actual money needs to change hands here -- it's just a fee on the books (a fee they are effectively charging to themselves). And it's not just "distribution" but a variety of additional charges. On top of that, the studio may then charge "interest" on that money, even though it's really just lending money to itself. What it all means is that rather than becoming profitable at ~$150 million (the actual money spent), AMovieCo now needs to earn over $400 million before anyone with a cut of the profits sees an additional dime from the movie, thanks to completely imaginary accounting entries on the books.

[Osmeric]

The movie has already turned a profit though. Don't believe that BS that it has to clear 500 million in reality all movies cost far less than what "experts" say. If you listen to them Lord of the Rings never turned a profit.

This is a bullshit argument that confuses two notions of profit: sleazy legal maneuver profit designed to cheat people with net profit clauses in their contracts, and actual profit that studios use to determine whether the film was worth making.

The numbers being bandied about in the trade press were the latter, not the former.

[Nathreim]

This is a bullshit argument that confuses two notions of profit: sleazy legal maneuver profit designed to cheat people with net profit clauses in their contracts, and actual profit that studios use to determine whether the film was worth making.

Its not just to cheat people out of net profit its also to cheat the Government. If they show no profit they write off the movie as a loss and get the taxes back from producing the movie and pay no taxes on the theatrical profits.

If you really think a movie has to make 4 times its production cost to be profitable and I have a bridge to sell you.

For crying out loud Waterworld the flop of all flops made money and it cost more than this movie and made half as much.

[Madeupname999]

People need to stop arguing and accept the plain facts that this movie did make a profit but the question is did it make enough profit to justify sequels which is the question us fans are interested it?

Well it seem legendary has been taken over by chinese company and there is no doubt that China has a huge hardon for Warcraft movies and its lore so i do believe sequels is in the future but does the sequels finish off where the warcraft movie left off or do they ditch it and go for the arthas story?

[Gzo]

Let's look at a breakdown of Godzilla's total film revenue + profit/loss as it was made by Legendary Pictures and costed the same production budget of $160 million as Warcraft movie did. (Source: No. 19 ‘Godzilla’ – 2014 Most Valuable Movie Blockbuster Tournament by deadline.com)

(In millions)

Domestic box office $200.68
Foreign box office $250.37
China box office $77.63
Global box office $528.68

Domestic theatrical/Non theatrical rental $102.35
Foreign theatrical rental $97.64
China theatrical rental $19.41
Domestic home entertainment $80.3
Foreign home entertainment $62.6
Domestic pay TV $22
Domestic network TV $20.06
Domestic syndication $3.01
Foreign pre-sales and overages --
Foreign TV $61.42
Merchandise $5
Total revenues $497.87

Net production cost $160
Domestic releasing costs $70
Foreign releasing costs $65.7
Domestic home entertainment costs $24.09
Foreign home entertainment costs $23.16
Interest $7.2
Residuals and off-the-tops $24.42
Participations $15
Overhead $16
Total Costs $405.57

Studio net profit before fee $92.3
Fee $39.83
Studio net profit $52.477

Cash on cash return (Revenue/Cost) $1.12


"THE BOTTOM LINE: Another film that had billion-dollar aspirations because of the global brand awareness of Toho’s title character, but fell short. It certainly did better than the 1998 Roland Emmerich-directed reptile revival film for Sony, which was considered a disappointment. That Godzilla opened on a Wednesday making $62.6M in five days and grossed $379M worldwide and $136.3M stateside, on a $130 million budget. Legendary’s Godzilla did better for its $160 million production budget, grossing $528.7M worldwide, including China. Participation costs were minimal, but where Legendary got dinged was in the distribution fee it paid to former partner Warner Bros. According to our tally here, the film turned in a net profit just north of $92.3M. Subtract Warner Bros’ distribution fee of $39.8M, and that left a $52.477M net. Warner Bros co-financed 25% of the film, so it gets one-quarter of that fee, too, proving it’s always better to be the studio (Warner Bros makes $52.9M). Legendary ends up with $39.35 million in net profits."


Considering Godzilla's total film revenue + profit/loss, Warcraft needs to gross around $500m worldwide box office.

[Vulgrym]

It matters, because...

... it's a US studio that produced the movie
... it's a US based brand
... Blizzard is a US based company

All this things matter in the movie business. As I said, no US studio would produce another $150 million production + $100 million marketing cost movie to only cater to Asia and get another box office bomb with $45 million in the domestic box office. They might reduce the budget for a second movie to $50-80 million, the marketing budget to $50 million as well to produce "Warcraft 2" but for sure we will never ever see another WC movie with this budget.

That's a strange argument. US studios will go wherever they can expect a reasonable return. Money is money and they are motivated by greed.

Fast and Furious and Pacific Rim both had sequels justified purely on the strength of the overseas take.

Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides reportedly had a production budget of $250M, made $241M in the US but made so much money overseas that the studio felt comfortable green-lighting Dead Men Tell No Tales (next year). According to that one article that keeps getting re-linked and is being taken as gospel for true movie costs, that next Pirates movie should have been a risky proposition.

Sequels aside, US studios are pandering more to Chinese audiences specifically. Iron Man 3 had alternate scenes for Chinese viewings, Transformers 4 was shot in China etc.

Most industry folks peg the Chinese movie market surpassing the US in the next 1-2 years (eg. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/90810812-9...#axzz4DPYecN8A). I'm sure a US studio would prefer that a US-produced movie make tons of money in BOTH markets, but they're not going to avoid going in on a movie that is expected to do amazing in China and not the US.

Every major corporation, regardless of industry, is trying to crack the Chinese market. Why would a movie studio ignore the country if it's sitting on a property that is massively popular over there?

What Warcraft has done is prove there is tremendous global appeal for the IP. There will almost assuredly be a sequel. I think the production budget lands closer to the $100M - $125M range, but not expecting it given its success everywhere but the US would be silly.

[Vitrino]

People need to stop arguing and accept the plain facts that this movie did make a profit but the question is did it make enough profit to justify sequels which is the question us fans are interested it?

I guess we won't know the answer until they had sold us two waves of DVD/BR releases (one for the theatrical version on Sept/Oct and three or four months later the extended Director's cut version). Yes, the studios are so greedy.

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does the sequels finish off where the warcraft movie left off or do they ditch it and go for the arthas story?

If the sequel does ever get green-lit, which I hope, it will depend on whether Duncan Jones is at the lead or no. If he is, he will continue with Thrall's story.