![warcraft the beginning warcraft the beginning](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1pXGoGU+LL._SX342_.jpg)
But, to be fair, it was intended to score big in China (Legendary, which put up 45% of the budget, was purchased last year by Dalian Wanda Group) and did so for a brief moment. So without the China boost, it would have been a miserable across-the-board miss, along the lines of John Carter, Jack the Giant Slayer, and Battleship.
![warcraft the beginning warcraft the beginning](https://secureservercdn.net/160.153.138.53/393.6b8.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/warcraft-01.jpg)
That’s a miserable 1.93x multiplier, on par with Watchmen, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and One Direction: This is Us. Oh right, that’s because it also earned just $46.61 million in North America off a $24.1m debut weekend. That’s arguably what happened around the world ($162.5m not including China) as well as North America. It played to fans of the game while alienating (or failing to capture the interest in the first place) of general audiences. It earned almost all of that money ($156m) in the first five days of release, with $91m (41%) coming just in the first 48 hours. But, even in China, its legs were painfully short. Yes, the film earned $220.8 million in China alone, which makes it one of the bigger release ever in said territory and the sixth-biggest Hollywood import behind Zootopia, Jurassic World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and Furious 7. If not for the miraculous business in China, this would have been a disaster for all parties. Investors don’t throw money into big budget movies to just break even. But it is not a breakout smash hit by any definition. The film made around 2.675x its production budget (not including marketing costs), which means it may break even down in post-theatrical. Even with a whopping $220 million in China, which amounted to over half of the film’s $430m worldwide cume, the $160m production is still a slight money loser (around $15m so says The Hollywood Reporter). And on that scale, it is indeed a failure, albeit less of one than many of us presumed once upon a time. Like a number of big-budget movies opening these days, Warcraft had two specific goals.