The Warcraft film with Vikings star Travis Fimmel has flopped financially. The blockbuster was hit with major obstacles even before its cinema release
Travis Fimmel made his big breakthrough with his role as Ragnar Lothbrok in the Vikings series. The character was so popular with many fans that they still clung to Ragnar years after Fimmel’s departure from the series
In 2016, the Australian actor starred in his first major blockbuster movie. In the video game adaptation Warcraft: The Beginning, Travis Fimmel can be seen as the knight Anduin Lothar. However, Duncan Jones’ film flopped at the box office. In an interview, the director revealed how much the studio interfered with his vision
Warcraft flop: The fantasy blockbuster had to suffer 1000 cuts
One of the reasons why Warcraft became a million-dollar loss for the studio is the long wait between the announcement and release of the movie. A film adaptation of the Warcraft games was first announced back in 2006. By the time the film was released in cinemas in 2016, it had gone through an arduous phase of preparations, delays, filming and post-production for around three and a half years
(Travis Fimmel and a lot of CGI orcs in Warcraft: The Beginning)
In an interview with Thrillist, director Duncan Jones, a huge Warcraft fan himself, talked about the uphill battle against studio interference in his personal vision of the blockbuster:
When you try to make a movie like Warcraft and do it in a unique way, you die a death by 1,000 cuts. Not just cuts for editing. It’s small changes that seem really innocuous. As a filmmaker, I just understand how to make a movie holistically. Every choice I make, whether it’s a story, a character or a costume, works together.
When you make a small change, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. When you make those small changes, especially over three and a half years, suddenly you spend all your time trying to figure out how to fix what’s been messed with.
The long wait for the movie, which caused some of the hype around Warcraft to be missed, combined with poor reviews, may have been the main reason Warcraft: The Beginning did so disappointingly financially.
