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After postponed for many times,
Warcraft: The Beginning, an American fantasy film directed by Duncan Jones and written by Jones, Charles Leavitt and Chris Metzen was finally on show first in China on June 8, 2016, and then in the US on June 10, 2016.
Warcraft: The Beginning, the film of the hit computer game, opened in China two weeks ago, taking $156m (£109m) in five days and topping box offices.
Although the ratings at IMDb and Douban (popular rating sites in the US and China respectively) are similar, film critics in the US have not been kind to the “Warcraft” movie. They think the movie has met it's Waterloo in the US. One critic for the New York Daily News wrote, “Somebody should have put this script to the sword.” But criticism has not hurt the film’s performance in China, the world’s fast-growing movie market.
So why has Warcraft movie performed so well in China?
The population base in China is large
As the largest populated country with over 1.6 billion people, the population base is obviously a great advantage for China. More people lead to more World of Warcraft players, which may result in more target audience.
The target audience has expendable income
World of Warcraft was first introduced in China in 2005, when online access and internet cafes were growing rapidly. Over 10 years since its released, it still owns over 7 million players and about half of those gamers are from China. Now many of the WoW players are men aged 20-35, who has expendable income to enjoy the movies in the theaters. What's more, most of them may have girl friends who are willing to accompany them while they are recalling their memories.
The promotion is geiliable
Legendary Entertainment, the studio in charge of the promotion, was acquired by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda earlier this year for $3.5bn. Legendary's in-house marketing teams reportedly cut several dozen pieces of China-specific footage, and released more trailers for the movie in China than in the US. Legendary opened up the equity of the $160 million budget film to four Chinese firms. Logically, these included China Film Group, the state-owned film conglomerate with which Legendary already had a distribution relationship. It also included: social media giant Tencent, making it one of its first real forays into movie investment; distributor Taihe, for its marketing input, and Huayi Brothers Media, as a solid private sector studio. It also brought on companies such as computer maker Lenovo, chip maker Intel, car maker Jeep and brewery Tsingtao to sponsor the show, many of the decision makers of which were WoW players.
The release date is during China's Dragon Boat Festival
The opening of this movie was on the Dragon Boat Festival, a public holiday across China, so the potential audience was tremendous, including the WoWers who don't want to influence their work next day and even those non WoWers. It did face competition from X-Men: Apocalypse, the Angry Birds Movie and other Chinese films, but none of them could overwhelm the charm of Warcraft.
The rising concept of selling feelings
Luo Zhenyu, founder and host of the online social-issues talk show, Logical Thinking, aroused the concept of selling fellings. Now, the mainstream Chinese people are always talking about feelings. "Would you like to watch World of Warcraft movie since you played it years ago?" "No? Well, you don't have the feelings." As a result, many people are in the theaters to own the feelings.
Many females go to theaters to support Daniel Wu
There are lots female fans in China. Lots of them rushed to theaters to support the charming Daniel Wu, although to their disappointment, they can't even see Daniel's face clearly because he plays Gul'Dan in the movie, they still love it no matter what. That's the great power of fans.
Has the movie reached its peak?
I think the answer to this question would be yes, since most of the target audience have already watched this movie. Thanks to the global totals, the film has already turned a nice profit – more than doubling its $160 million production budget. At $377.6 million worldwide, which may be enough to justify further adventures set in the World of Warcraft. As the movie continues its box office run, it’s now set another record. Per Box Office Mojo, Warcraft‘s total has now surpassed The Prince of Persia‘s $336 million globally to become the highest-grossing video game movie of all-time worldwide. Those familiar with the history of game-to-film adaptations know that the “competition” Warcraft faced for that title was scarce, but it’s still a noteworthy achievement for what could have been a massive flop. Despite not catching on in North America, Warcraft has proven to be a successful investment for Universal.
With the success of Warcraft: The Beginning box office. Maybe the plan for the next Warcraft movie will be on put on the agenda soon. Let's wait and see.
You can download it on the 
Riders of Icarus is an action-focused MMORPG with intense aerial combat. You can collect lots of flying and ground mounts ranging from fire-breathing dragons to ferocious bears. 
