Two days ago, Legendary Pictures reminded the people of China about the upcoming Warcraft movie by decorating an entire mall with handcrafted physical exhibits from this fantastic universe.
Movie adaptations of video games are generally disastrous. Don’t believe me? Check out Blood Rayne, Doom, Resident Evil (even though this one seems to have a cult following of sorts), Aliens vs. Predator, Mortal Kombat, Hitman, Need for Speed, so on and so forth. Not even popular actors couldn’t save these catastrophes from the abominable scripts that were written for them, but the future seems to hold a few nice surprises for the gamers who’d like to see their favorite characters on the silver screen. First of all, there’s the Warcraft movie (also known as Warcraft:The Beginning), which is scheduled for a June 10 release, and secondly, there’s an Assassin’s Creed movie starring Michael Fassbender (might know him as Magneto in the MCU) in the works.
The Legendary Warcraft Experience, as this exhibition is called, kicked off at Joycity in Chengdu on December 31. China is the host of many eSports tournaments each year, so organizing such an exhibition could make a lot of sense from this point of view. However, I think there’s a different motivation behind Legendary Pictures’ decision to create the biggest free movie-themed exhibition ever mounted in China. The world’s most populous country is the second-largest market for the film industry. Just to paint you a picture, China is the reason why Jurrasic World had a record-breaking opening weekend, and why Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, which will only launch there this month, didn’t manage to break that record.
Legendary Pictures must be thinking that promoting the upcoming Warcraft movie in China using a gargantuan replica of the Doomhammer or lifelike character statues might be a great recipe for success, and truth be told, I don’t think they’re far from the truth.
The exhibition includes all sorts of props (more than 150 of those, actually), costumes and weapons right out of the movie, or in other words, things that would make the hearts of fantasy lovers skip a bit, regardless if they’re more into video games or movies from this genre.
Travis Fimmel, who is best known as Ragnar Lothbrok in History’s Vikings, will play Anduin Lothar, the leader of the humans, while Toby Kebbell of Prince of Persia (one of the few decent video game-based movies out there), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Rocknrolla fame got cast as Durotan, the leader of the Orcs. I actually find it more exciting that Duncan Jones, the director of two of my favorite movies of all time (Moon and Source Code) will helm this one, too.
It should be noted that the Warcraft movie was supposed to be released in December 2015, but in order to prevent it from opening at the same time with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the producers decided to push back the date by six months. That’s plenty of time for promoting the movie a bit more.
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