Despite bombing at the domestic box office where it failed to even crack the $50 million mark, Warcraft remains the highest-grossing video game adaptation ever made after a solid showing overseas propelled it to a global tally of $439 million, over half of which came from China alone. However, the huge $160 million production budget and subsequent marketing costs rendered the profit margins razor thin.
It didn’t help that the critical consensus wasn’t particularly kind, either, as Warcraft could only muster a weak Rotten Tomatoes score of 28%, with many people finding that the dense and expansive mythology was virtually impenetrable to non-fans. Director Duncan Jones handled the jump from low budget independent movies to studio blockbusters pretty well, and his visual slings were one of the best things about the film, but even he’s admitted in the past that chances of a sequel ever happening are slim.
That being said, we live in an age where every recognizable property will eventually be rebooted at some stage, and we’re now hearing from our sources – the same ones that told us Ben Affleck would be returning as Batman in The Flash a month before it was officially confirmed – that Legendary are already discussing a new version of Warcraft behind the scenes.
According to our intel, the movie will wipe the slate clean and start from scratch all over again, which isn’t good news for fans of Jones’ fantasy epic, not to mention the cast members that signed multi-picture contracts in the hope of Warcraft becoming a franchise. Details on what exactly’s being planned for the project are still unclear, but given that the first film spent a decade stuck in development hell before finally coming together, the studio will no doubt be hoping that things move a lot faster on the second attempt.
