This $439M Fantasy Movie Trending On Netflix Makes Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' Box Office Sadder

Summary Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves underperformed at the box office despite a big-name cast, $150 million budget, and positive reviews.

Warcraft, a comparably budgeted action fantasy film based on a popular RPG, earned $439 million worldwide, highlighting the missed opportunity for Dungeons & Dragons.

D&D's release period was challenging, competing with highly anticipated films and relying on word of mouth in an unpredictable cinematic climate.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' dismal box office performance looks even more unfortunate when compared to the $439 million action fantasy film currently taking Netflix by storm. When it came time to prove itself in theaters early last year, Dungeons & Dragons surprisingly fell flat despite being cut out for success. In addition to Dungeons & Dragons' big-name cast, including lead star Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, and Hugh Grant, the movie had a whopping $150 million budget to capitalize on and a fantasy adventure premise suited for the big screen.

Dungeons & Dragons adapted its story from the iconic tabletop role-playing fantasy game, depicting a thief named Edgin Darvis (Pine) and a ragtag group of adventurers as they execute a heist to retrieve a valuable relic. The cleverly humorous, action-packed adaptation impressed more than just D&D IP fans but critics, evidenced by the movie's Certified Fresh score of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. In the face of it all, Dungeons & Dragons still frustratingly flopped, earning about $207 million worldwide, well under what it would need to recover its expenses and be considered a success.

The general rule of thumb is that a movie needs to gross 2.5 times its budget to be deemed successful. Dungeons & Dragons made 1.4 times its budget.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Warcraft On Netflix Is A Reminder Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' Box Office Should Have Been Much Better

Warcraft Was 2x As Big But Received Not Nearly As Well As D&D

Close

Warcraft Where to Watch *Availability in US stream

rent

buy Not available Not available Not available Director Duncan Jones Release Date May 25, 2016 Writers Duncan Jones , Alex Rocco Cast Travis Fimmel , Daniel Wu , Toby Kebbell , Paula Patton , Ben Foster , Dominic Cooper Runtime 123 minutes Main Genre Fantasy Expand

Dungeons & Dragons' performance is doubly vexing when considering the ongoing success of the kindred movie Warcraft. Warcraft's action fantasy premise is also based on a popular fantasy RPG - Blizzard Entertainment's online game World of Warcraft - and the movie shared an almost equivalent production budget to Dungeons & Dragons at $160 million. Theoretically, Dungeons & Dragons should have been able to produce similar, or, at the very least, closer earnings to Warcraft's $439 million worldwide gross, especially on the account that it was a much better movie in the eyes of critics and audiences.

Title Budget Worldwide Gross RT Critics Score RT Audience Score Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves $150,000,000 $207,854,947 91% 93% Warcraft $160,000,000 $438,899,824 29% 76%

A $439 million haul may make Warcraft two times bigger than Dungeons & Dragons, and the former film's current popularity on Netflix (#3 of Netflix's top 10 movies in the U.S. today) may justify its incredible box office haul - but Dungeons & Dragons welcomed a much better reception. For critics, in particular, Dungeons & Dragons came across as well-made, skillfully blending humor and action with great world-building that anyone, including those unfamiliar with D&D, would find delightful. Critics couldn't say the same of Warcraft. Audiences were more receptive to it, yet still, Warcraft lagged in overall approval behind Dungeons & Dragons.

Why Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Underperformed At The Box Office

The Odds Were Stacked Against Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

The various reasons that'd explain why Dungeons & Dragons underperformed at the box office reveal that the odds weren't in its favor. Unlike 2016's Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons was released in a considerably grueling period in cinema, as theatergoer trends and the forecast of any movie's box office performance have become unpredictable. Competing with the releases of the highly anticipated films Super Mario Bros. and John Wick: Chapter Four, coupled with the fact that it relied more on word of mouth than establishing a strong commercial presence, meant that Dungeons & Dragons was at an even steeper loss in the current cinematic climate.

Dungeon & Dragons would've had to pull out all the stops to entice the number of viewers it needed outside fans of its comparatively smaller IP. D&D does have an impressive following, but without effective marketing strategies, the movie was a hard sell for IP newcomers inundated with the promise of almost immediately recognizable franchises that harbored great promotional backing and even better audience reviews. That said, as hard as it was for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves to put its foot in the door, its more favorable aspects persist among the wreckage of its box office performance.

Source: Netflix