Photo: Legendary Pictures

Chris Luckett

Being a bomb in North America no longer guarantees a movie’s global failure. Warcraft, which cost over $200-million between production and marketing costs, has earned $44-million in Canada and the U.S. over the last three weeks’ of release.

It’s made $221-million in China so far.

Globally, Warcraft has now earned almost ten times its domestic box office numbers, totalling upwards of $420-million.

That makes it a higher-grosser than the previously most-profitable video games Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, The Angry Birds Movie, and Resident Evil: Afterlife, none of which crossed $400-million.

Legendary Pictures hasn’t yet decided whether to greenlight a sequel to the fantasy epic, but is at work on Pacific Rim 2 — which also happened to earn more in China than in Canada and the U.S.

Demand in China for Warcraft was so large, over 70% of theatre screens in the country were dedicated to the movie on its opening weekend.

Warcraft is just one of many recent China-backed pictures to do better overseas than domestically. This past weekend, Now You See Me 2 also opened to $43-million in China (outperforming Independence Day: Resurgence‘s opening), nearly double its North American opening of $22-million.

(Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Forbes)