The phenomenal game IP movie is scheduled to be released simultaneously in North America on March 31
Can "Dragon and Dungeon" save the dismal box office of "You Gai Dian"?
In a shocking robbery, five professional heroes gathered to face the strongest demon in history, the red-robed witch-the movie "Dungeons and Dragons: Glory of Heroes", which was adapted from the phenomenal game IP, is officially announced on March 31, and will be synchronized at the same time. Released in North America.
Although the film is "menacing", the reality is that there are constant attempts to bring popular games to the screen, but win-wins of word of mouth and box office are very rare.
From the founder of role-playing games
As the founder of RPG (role-playing) games, "Dungeon and Dragon" plays an important role in the western fantasy world: its pioneering rules, mechanisms, and systems have profoundly influenced the games of later generations, and "World of Warcraft" is popular all over the world. It is created based on many background settings of "Dragon and Dungeon"; besides the game, "Dragon and Dungeon" with more than 40 million players worldwide has already become a symbol of Western popular culture, with book sales exceeding 1 billion U.S. dollars. It has been mentioned many times in the American dramas "Stranger Things" and "The Big Bang Theory".
This time, it has been carefully adapted and put on the big screen. It is a fresh experience not to be missed, whether it is for movie fans or game players.
The film has both action and comedy elements
"Dungeons and Dragons: Rogue Glory" starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, Sophia Lilith, Reggie-Jean Page, Hugh Grant and more Star cast.
In the preview, the cool scenes exploded and new strange monsters appeared one after another. The Rogue Alliance formed by bards, barbarians, warlocks, paladins and druids embarked on a dangerous journey of treasure hunting. They made many enemies Repeatedly fell into a desperate situation.
In addition to the eye-pleasing action elements, the comedy elements of the film are also eye-catching. Facing the task of hell-level difficulty, a group of seemingly unreliable "heroes" stepped forward. Make a plan that fails"; the barbarian Holgay seems to only use brute force to solve the problem; the warlock Simon and the paladin Henk are silly and funny, and the other is serious.
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"Gaming to Electronics": box office hitting the street is not uncommon
Whenever a "You Gaidian" work is released, people will wonder whether it can break the box office curse - because it has been difficult for "You Gaidian" to make a breakthrough, so "You Gaidian" has always hoped that there will be a Excellent films can bring opportunities for such subjects to turn around and become stronger.
Many well-known IPs are not working on the screen
Looking back on the journey of "Game to Electronics", the IP is not lacking in popularity, but the box office performance has been repeatedly lacking.
In 1993, a movie called "Super Mario Bros." based on the popular game "Super Mario" came out.
Despite its box-office flop, it spawned a whole new genre of film—movies based on games.
Attempts to bring hits to the silver screen have continued since then, but word-of-mouth and box-office wins are rare.
In 2001, the success of the RPG game series "Final Fantasy" made producer Hironobu Sakaguchi not content to be the best director in the game world - he shot the CG animation film "Final Fantasy: In the Soul".
Reluctantly, it failed disastrously at the box office and received rave reviews, causing a total of more than 94 million US dollars in huge losses.
In 2010, the highly anticipated "Prince of Persia: The Blades of Time", with an investment cost of 229 million U.S. dollars, had a global box office of only 336 million U.S. dollars, and suffered double failures at the box office and word of mouth. Dare to try another fantasy video game adaptation.
In 2016, the famous movie "Warcraft" also failed in terms of story and character creation.
The film was bleak in the North American market, but thanks to the emotional support of Chinese game fans, the box office of the film did not fall to the bottom.
The production cost of the film is about 160 million US dollars, plus the marketing expenses are about 250 million US dollars, and it needs to earn more than 450 million US dollars at the box office to pay back.
In the end, "Warcraft" made a box office of 430 million US dollars in the world, and Chinese audiences contributed 221 million US dollars in the box office.
In the case of fans’ feelings being overdrawn by “Warcraft”, the follow-up game adaptation movies did not perform well in China. The average return rate of “Need for Speed” and “Hitman: Codename 47” hovered around 10%, lower than the industry average rate of return.
In contrast, the "Tomb Raider" and "Resident Evil" series are considered to be the best in "game change".
In 2001, the film "Tomb Raider" was released - the film starring Angelina Jolie, in just three days of its premiere in the United States, the cumulative box office reached 48.2 million US dollars, and finally won 280 million US dollars in box office worldwide, It became one of the most successful video game adaptations at the box office.
However, "Tomb Raider 2" starring Jolie in 2003 was a box office failure due to a clichéd plot.
The "Resident Evil" series of films was directed by Paul Anderson and starred Milla Jovovich. Six films were filmed from 2002 to 2017.
Although this series of movies is famous and well-recognized, the box office results are not very satisfactory: the first film has a budget of 33 million US dollars, and the United States has brought back 40 million US dollars; The cost of the third part was still controlled at 45 million US dollars, and the box office was 50.64 million US dollars; the best "Resident Evil 4", relying on 3D gimmicks, the box office broke through 60 million US dollars for the first time; the budget of the fifth part exceeded 65 million for the first time US dollars, the global cumulative box office reached 221 million US dollars.
Although it is one of the few game-adapted movies that does not lose money, it cannot be said to make a lot of money.
In recent years, a "game-changing" work that has received attention is "Uncharted" with a cost of 120 million US dollars.
The film will be released in China in 2022. In the end, the cumulative box office in the mainland reached 151 million yuan, and the box office performance can only be regarded as quite satisfactory.
Capital + brain hole + balance are indispensable
Generally speaking, game-adapted movies can be roughly divided into the following categories: fighting game-adapted movies, such as "The King of Fighters" and "Killer: Codename 47"; action-adventure game-adapted movies, such as the "Tomb Raider" series, "Vampiric Ryan" series; film works adapted from horror adventure games, such as "Resident Evil" series, "Silent Hill" series; film adaptations of shooting games, such as "House of the Dead" and "Doom Warrior", etc.; film adaptations of role-playing games , such as "Dragon and Dungeon" and "Warcraft" series, etc.; racing game adaptation movies, such as "Need for Speed"; casual puzzle game adaptation movies, such as "Super Mario Bros", "Angry Birds", "Tetris" ""Fruit Ninja" and so on.
A netizen once analyzed 38 game-adapted movies and pointed out that game-adapted movies themselves are dancing with shackles. To achieve a successful adaptation, capital + brain hole + balance are indispensable.
First of all, capital provides the premise basis for game adaptation movies.
Secondly, brain hole is a bonus item for game adaptation movies.
For game-adapted movies, the screenwriter's imagination determines the quality of the movie's plot.
No matter what type of game is adapted into a movie, "story" is the most important thing. No matter how powerful the skills and graphics are, if there is no story, it will be boring.
Third, balance is the starting point of a game adaptation movie and determines the direction of the movie.
For many game-adapted movies, fans don't buy it, and audiences don't understand it, and they are often in a very embarrassing situation.
How to balance fans and general audiences is a test of the wisdom of the creators of such films.
It can be said that "You Changed Electronics" has been working hard to explore.
Once the relatively single mode of production and adaptation is overcome, the sense of substitution is increased, and the story line is enriched, there will definitely be excellent works.
Today, "Gaming Game" and "Dungeons and Dragons" are about to be released—the game has a huge fan base around the world, and the film version has been developed as early as 2015. Can it provide a better experience for "Game Changing" in the depth of the plot and the movie? It remains to be seen what breakthroughs have been made in terms of cultural performance.
Text/Reporter Xiao Yang
Beijing Youth Daily