Success. I think it will be profitable from the Chinese box office alone. I'm guessing worldwide it will gross at least half a billion but possibly way more depending on how good it actually is.
shareThis movie may be a moderate hit in China. However, I don't anticipate this movie being a huge success outside of the Chinese market. Maybe a few nearby China neighboring nations may like it as well.
I've seen the previews for this movie on a couple of occasions recently when watching "Fantastic Beasts...", "Doctor Strange", etc. here in the USA. In the previews you couldn't really tell what the story was about. I guess it has something to do with China's Great Wall monument and supernatural monsters attacking China's army? Also it looks like a long-haired Matt Damon was being filled in as some sort of token leader/hero in ancient China? WTF? There was no reaction from the audiences when the previews ended. It looked like no one in the theater knew what to make of it.
Quite frankly, it's going to take a lot more than one Hollywood celeb like Matt Damon to lure moviegoers outside of China to see this movie. It doesn't look all that appealing, especially here in the USA where Chinese ancient culture and media is not very popular. The days are long gone when moviegoers would just go out to see a movie because a certain Hollywood actor was in it. Nowadays a movie needs to have an appealing story line and this one does not have one except for the Chinese. Maybe moviegoers in Europe, Latin American or African countries may like the movie, but I doubt it.
We'll see, but from an outside perspective looking in as one US moviegoer this movie doesn't look good. And I think many US Hollywood execs know this, which is why I suspect they intentionally decided to release this movie in the month of February, which is typically their dumping ground time of the year of crap films before the highly anticipated spring and summer films come out.
It's not that the culture isn't interesting, it's that Hollow-Weed has no clue how to write anything interesting about it.
Every time they touch on the region with a 'BIG BLOCKBUSTER' attempt of a film, it's something preposterous like this.
Rather than utilizing the actual mythology, set in the ancient past where the fantasy will feel more 'real' with an imaginative setting, Hollywood plunks down some dumbed-down tropes into it and ruins any chance of the movie being more than B-movie schlock. And these days, the pretentious hacks try to be so dead-serious with it they don't even manage to make a delightful cult classic such as the wonderfully ridiculous "Big Trouble in the Little China", a movie I can't help but watch every time it's on because it's the perfect quintessential 'so bad it's good' film. And seeing Kurt Russle hamming the heck out of his lines is always fun. I believe the actors knew full well they were in a terrible movie and just had fun with it.
HOWEVER, you COULD say that Kung-Fu Panda was 'Chinese' themed, and it did extremely well critically and commercially. It's first sequel was even a better story. There were also the minor Chinese-made hits in the US such as "Kung Fu Hustle", which did quite well for a subtitled foreign film. And let's not forget "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". There we had a success with an interesting dramatic story that was quasi-fantasy. So successful US releases with a strong Oriental theme and setting CAN be done. Hollywood just lacks many talented writers.
It's going to flop in the U.S., but worldwide it will be fine because business in China will be massive.
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underperformer more than likely
i mean is matt damon popular in china??
as regards rest of world can he open a movie if he is not playing jason bourne??
I think it'll definitely flop, it looks exactly like the forgettable crap that comes out every January and February.
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