Universal may have been right to think that Warcraft was a problem movie. No, not because Duncan Jones made Generic Fantasy Film: The Movie. Depending on how you look at it, Warcraft is either a Universal boondoggle or a marginal success.
At the domestic box office, Warcraft opened at #2 with just $24.35 million at the box office, which is crummy for a movie with a $160 million budget. It was trounced by The Conjuring 2, which scared up $40.35 million in ticket sales.
However, the international gross for Warcraft was hefty, drawing in $261.7 million, for a total worldwide gross of $286 million. Warcraft did the bulk of its business in China, where it earned a staggering $144.7 million; Variety placed its four-day Chinese opening gross as high as $156 million.
For scale, Warcraft‘s Chinese box office is the equivalent of 1 million gryphon aviaries, though I haven’t accounted for the cost of lumber.
Tracking Warcraft‘s box office in the coming week should be interesting, particularly if the Chinese market can push the film out of the red and into the black. What did you guys think of Warcraft? Let us know in the comments.
[via Variety, Box Office Mojo]
