The Great Wall vs The US Domestic Box Office

Within a month of release The Great Wall, the newest medieval epic courtesy of Legendary Pictures directed by Zhang Yimou and starring American favorite Matt Damon, has accumulated a whopping 245million$ overseas in foreign markets and only ~20million$ at the domestic box office. There is something to be said When a movie like this under perform domestically but thrives overseas. You see it looks like we have another Warcraft or Terminator Genysis on our hand, where the movie practically bombs at the US Canada box office but makes up for it in foreign markets like China, but there are a couple extra layers that factor into The Great Wall circumstance, factors that make it all the more paramount it preform domestically in the weeks to come.

The first major factor that has to be considered is The Great Wall production as a major Hollywood China collaboration, one of the first of its kind. While the Chinese film industry has had a significant presence in Hollywood affairs (and visa versa) there has never been a movie to the scale The Great Wall is in Chinese history. The 150million$ production is paid in part by Chinese money, developed by Chinese film studios and spearheaded by China's most prestigious director, Zhang Yimou, the same man who brought us the opening performance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This project if successful, can open the doors for many Chinese film studios, exerting new and competitive pressure on the modern Hollywood blockbuster.

At 270million$ and growing, its safe to say this movie will be profitable when all is said and done, but it's likely to assume at this point only 10% of all its proceeds will come from the domestic box office, a significant skew in the typical foreign to domestic ratio. Why does this matter? If a movie makes money why should Legendary Pictures care if The Great Wall bombs domestically? The Great Wall is as much experimental as it is an imitation; Legendary Pictures hopes US audiences will consume The Great Wall as they would any other blockbuster. It's no secret that any years most profitable films are always the annual big budget action blockbusters, that's why there called blockbusters. If the same product is packaged but from a different origin point shouldn't it yield the same returns? Apparently not, as it turns out. Unlike overseas, spectacle does not sell as well as it used to in the states. When it does sell it can sell big, but there is a definite trend appearing over the last decade between a movie's domestic take and its overall critical praise. Not all critically praised movies are profitable but a majority of domestic blockbusters are critically praised. The Great Wall got a 35% on Rotten Tomatoes (Not terrible but definitely not great) and a B in Cinemascore (also not great). Movies that get slammed critically don't tend to break out of the cinematic noise, The Great Wall seems to honor this trend, at least at the North American box office. It's a shame too because no matter how much money The Great Wall makes Hollywood is going to want strong returns domestically if its going to green light more collaborations with foreign studios.

The Great Wall will make its money back, but wont make the ripples in Hollywood that director Zhang Yimou had hoped. Film, at least under the Hollywood model, are a business and the safest investments make their money back domestically. This trend is changing but too slowly for The Great Wall to be the first major icebreaker, instead with hope and a bit of luck maybe this film will pave the way for another foreign blockbuster too smash the ceiling holding them back.