Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. and New Line Cinema's Rampage has officially passed the $400 million mark at the global box office. That includes $90.5m domestic and $309.6m overseas for a new $400.1m cume. And yeah, it has now earned around 3.33x times its $120m production budget. You can make the case that the Dwayne Johnson/Naomi Harris adaptation of the 1980's cult arcade game is essentially the first big-budget video game movie that qualifies as a hit since Angelina Jolie's first ($110m-budgeted) Tomb Raider back in 2001.
Rampage is the second-biggest video game adaptation both overseas (behind the $386 million overseas cume, with $214m from China, of Warcraft) and worldwide (behind Warcraft's $433m global cume in 2016). It is behind Sony's animated The Angry Birds Movie ($103m in 2016) and Paramount/Viacom Inc.'s Tomb Raider ($131m in 2001) in North America. But the likes of Warcraft ($433m, but on a $165m budget and with terrible reviews/word-of-mouth) and Walt Disney's Prince of Persia ($330m on a $200m, with poor reviews and buzz) didn't technically make a bunch of money and that the Resident Evil films were $40-$70m affairs.
I'm not arguing that "The Rock just broke the video game movie curse!" Even though Rampage was the best-reviewed live-action video game movie ever, it's a "by default" distinction and it still averaged 51% "fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes with a 5.4/10 average critic rating. And while the film is a hit, it's not necessarily the start of a giant new franchise, unless director Brad Peyton and company can find a new hook aside from "watch Dwayne Johnson fight giant animals again!" But it was a solid middle-tier biggie that qualifies as the first big-budget hit video game movie in 17 years.
Of note, the film (which earned $155 million in China) was one of three pre-summer shots at Warner Bros. trying to make gold out of video games. And, relatively speaking, all three of them were relative hits. Alicia Vikander's Tomb Raider stumbled in North America, where it made only $57m, but the $94m origin story earned halfway decent notices and $272m worldwide (including $79m in China). Inflation notwithstanding, that's just shy of the $274m global cume of the 2001 Tomb Raider. Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One was a massive hit, earning $135m domestic and $577m worldwide on a $175m budget.
That includes a whopping $220 million in China and gives WB three-for-three in the video game adaptation or video game-ish sandbox. It's a shame that Rampage may not catch up to Warcraft (unless it breaks out huge in Japan starting Friday). Otherwise, Johnson would have the biggest video game adaptation and the biggest video game-ish movie (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) on his resume. As it stands, the top eight movies of 2018 are two Walt Disney MCU movies (Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther), two Chinese blockbusters (Operation Red Sea and Detective Chinatown 2) and two WB video game flicks (Ready Player One and Rampage).
Say what you will about their struggles in the DC Films universe, but WB released two halfway decent and relatively well-received video game adaptations in two months. That kind of statistical impossibility may qualify them for a Nobel Prize if not a Fields Medal.
