By Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema released their animated feature “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” in cinemas this weekend and the results were pretty disastrous.
Given a small budget of just $30 million, it won’t impact Warners’ bottom line. Even so, the film opened to mixed/poor critical reviews – the lowest for any ‘Rings’ film to date – and not a great deal of love from audiences either with a ‘B’ CinemaScore.
By the end of Sunday the film will have a domestic opening weekend of just $4.6 million – double its international opening weekend last week but still just not good.
Now, Exhibitor Relations (via Discussing Film) has revealed a quote from a press release indicating that Warners has reportedly been refreshingly transparent about the film’s gestation saying:
“Announced in June 2021, ‘Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ was fast-tracked to ensure New Line Cinema did not lose the film adaptation rights for Tolkien’s novels while the LOTR trio – Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens – worked through a creative vision for the next live-action movies in the LOTR series of films.”
The movie has stirred debate online with quite a few defenders saying the lack of any real publicity for the movie is what effectively killed it rather than a question of quality over its content.
Either way, the film’s poor box-office turnout suggests a quick jump to VOD and SVOD platforms is possible for this.
The post “Rohirrim” Was Fast-Tracked To Retain Rights appeared first on Dark Horizons.
