The hit 2016 Warcraft movie is currently trending on Netflix’s streaming charts – and its success is the polar opposite of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Directed by David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones, the filmmaker behind Moon, Warcraft has a complicated plot involving Anduin Lothar of Stormwind on one side of a massive war and Durotan of the Frostwolf clan on the other side. They have to put their differences aside and band together to end the war when a warlock named Gul’dan leads the Horde through a magic portal to invade Azeroth.

Now that Warcraft is on Netflix, it’s finally reaching a wider audience. On the surface, Warcraft has a lot in common with Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. They’re both big-budget movie adaptations of roleplaying fantasy games, they both recruited a star-studded cast to bring their characters to life, and they both failed to launch the blockbuster franchise they were supposed to. But the successes and failures of Warcraft are the polar opposite of the successes and failures of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Where one failed, the other succeeded (and vice versa).

Warcraft Is Trending On Netflix’s Top 10 Movies

Eight years later, Warcraft is finally finding its audience

Eight years after it initially hit theaters, the Warcraft movie is finally finding its audience. The film has quickly climbed the Top 10 streaming chart since it joined Netflix’s library. Fans of the Warcraft video game franchise who might have missed the movie are finally catching up on it. Fans of the fantasy genre who were wary about forking out money for a cinema ticket are now giving the film a go from the comfort of their homes. Warcraft is the latest forgotten movie to find unexpected success on a streaming platform.

While streaming is often blamed for the downfall of the theatrical film industry, one of the positive things to come out of streaming is that it gives failed movies a second chance at success. Mike Flanagan’s sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep, found a huge audience when it arrived on HBO Max in 2020. Real Steel found success on Netflix when audiences needed to be cheered up during COVID. Spider-Man 3 saw a resurgence of viewership after the trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home dropped. Warcraft is the latest entry in this surprising new trend.

Warcraft Had The Reverse Success Of 2023’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

The critical and audience response to D&D flipped that of Warcraft

There’s an interesting parallel between Warcraft and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (and it’s not just that they’re both based on fantasy roleplaying games). The reception to each movie is at odds with the other, both critically and commercially. The successes and failures of Warcraft flipped those of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Although Warcraft was a modest success at the box office, it was widely panned by critics. And while Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was warmly received by critics, it bombed at the box office.

Warcraft grossed more than $439 million at the global box office on a budget of $160 million (via Box Office Mojo), which made Warcraft the highest-grossing video game movie – and meets the usual rule of thumb that a movie needs to gross 2.5 times its budget to be successful. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, on the other hand, grossed just over $207 million at the worldwide box office on a whopping budget of $150 million (via The Numbers). Clearly, Warcraft made a much bigger splash at the box office than Dungeons & Dragons.

But Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves does have one thing over Warcraft: the love of the critics. Warcraft was widely panned by critics, earning a dismal “rotten” score of 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves received a much better “fresh” score of 91%, indicating near-universal acclaim. Both movies were well-received by audiences: Warcraft has an audience score of 76%, while Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ audience score is 93%.

Why Warcraft Hasn’t Received A Sequel Yet (Despite Being Such A Big Box Office Hit)

Despite its seeming box office success, Warcraft still failed to break even

Despite becoming the highest-grossing video game movie ever made, Warcraft still hasn’t been given a sequel. It flopped at the domestic box office, but got a huge boost from its Chinese release. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t enough for the movie to be considered a hit. Given the immense costs that went into marketing Warcraft, its $439 million haul still didn’t reach the break-even point and pass the threshold of profitability. As a result, Warcraft was deemed unfit for a sequel and it remains a standalone movie.

Source: Box Office Mojo, The Numbers