In the U.S., where it’s due to open this weekend, the movie is not predicted to do almost as well, with experts reckoning it will debut at around $25 million.
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Warcraft accomplished this feat thanks to an advantageous release date on the eve of China’s Dragon Boat Festival, a rare import in the country’s protected market allowed in over the wall during a peak moviegoing moment.
China accounts for at least 10% of the 100 million fans of the World of Warcraft game, according to GF Securities.
“G2A as a globally oriented company aims to be global number one by taking care of each region”. By comparison, Warcraft’s offshore box office by last Sunday was estimated at million. Analysts who spoke with Variety estimate that Warcraft could rake in $150 million in its first five days in China. [Photo/ China.org.cn]The statistics have made “Warcraft” the No. 2 top grossing film for midnight opening and the biggest midnight opening of all time on a weekday. Warcraft was co-produced by Legendary Entertainment, which is owned by Dalian Wanda Group, which is a huge Chinese real estate and entertainment conglomerate. Considering that the American box office made $11 billion past year, Chan’s prediction of a Chinese film making $1.5 billion dollars wouldn’t seem to far off. However, his remarks about a Chinese made film are a little harder to parse out, as Chinese films are still slowly creeping into the American marketplace.
Like it or not, the film industry, while centered in Hollywood, is a global one, and the tastes of the rest of the world are having more of an effect on the types of films that do and don’t see the light of day.
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The news shouldn’t come as a total shock, since the movie’s video game namesake has a massive and dedicated player base in The Middle Kingdom, but the broader story here is that it’s becoming more common to see films tailored to succeed in foreign markets at the expense of the domestic market. Will we be looking back in a few years at Warcraft as the film where China determined the success or failure of any given movie? “There are going to be more films that appeal just to that part of the world, the same way there are US films that do no business in the rest of the world”. Well first, it goes to confirm the days of a film needing to succeed in America to be deemed a box office success are dead and gone.
