Warcraft opens in the US Friday and is expected to have a tepid $22 million in sales there its first weekend, eventually generating $45 million total, according to BoxOfficePro.com. It’s opening night did extremely well and fans really showed their support for the franchise.
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It’s the second biggest opening day for a film in Chinese box office history, soaring past the one-day totals for movies like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The environments featured in the film are ripped straight from the popular MMO World of Warcraft, and the film looks to play fairly closely to Blizzard’s official game version of events.
Chinese box office sales surged 49% a year ago to reach 44.1 billion yuan ($6.7 billion), while the North American market grew around 7% to $11.1 billion over the same period, according to comScore, a firm that monitors movie viewing.
According to Bloomberg, Wang operates the country’s biggest theater chain.
The movie is playing in a record-setting 67.5% of the 39,000 theater screens in mainland China, higher than previous record-holder “Furious 7”.
Tuesday midnight screenings were packed with diehard WoW fans dressed as their favorite characters from the computer games.
That’s good news for the studios behind the $160-million production, which is expected to open to lackluster results in the United States and Canada this weekend. It now sits at 19% on Rotten Tomatoes with 53 reviews counted.
“Warcraft has visual thrills to spare, but they – and director Duncan Jones’ distinctive gifts – are wasted on a sluggish and derivative adaptation of a best-selling game with little evident cinematic value”, the site’s consensus says.
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“Warcraft” is backed by powerful players in the Chinese media industry.
