As the size of the video game industry grew throughout the 80’s and 90’s, so too did the ambition of publishers and developers. No longer content with simply selling games, many sought new ways to market their creations to a larger audience. They started with toys and then moved on to television shows. Despite finding success in these areas though, it still was not enough. When Super Mario Bros. debuted in American movie theaters back in 1993, it opened up the floodgates for a stampede of other video game movies.
Nearly three decades later and countless other video game series have made the transition to the silver screen. There have been a few critical hits, but there have been considerably more misses. Looking at the numbers, it becomes clear that a movie doesn’t need to be popular with critics for it to be a box office hit. In fact, many of the highest-grossing video game movies of all time were panned by critics. Put simply, success is often determined more by a series’ popularity than it is the movie’s quality. This is something that’s all too clear when looking at the highest-grossing video game movies.
10 Tomb Raider ($274m)
Although Lara Croft: Tomb Raider had performed fairly well at the box office, its sequel failed to deliver and the series lay dormant for 15 years. With the huge success of Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider reboot though, Warner Brothers decided to try their hand at rebooting the movie series as well. In retrospect, they’re probably glad that they did.
Angelina Jolie was replaced with Alicia Vikander and Roar Uthaug was brought in to direct. Tomb Raider fared much better with critics than earlier Tomb Raider titles and generated a very respectable amount at the box office too. In particular, Tomb Raider performed well in the Chinese, French, and UK markets but fell agonizingly short of matching the performance of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
9 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider ($274m)
Just $53k dollars separate Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and the 2018 reboot, which in the grand scheme of things is a miniscule amount. The $131m that the movie made at the domestic box office, however, is fairly significant and beats the reboot’s US performance by a considerable margin. The movie’s success at the box office perhaps doesn’t tell the whole story though.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider has a critic approval rating of just 20% on Rotten Tomatoes and Angelina Jolie earned a nomination for the worst actress award at the 2001 Golden Raspberries for her portrayal of Lara. Luckily for Angelina, she lost out on the Razzie to Mariah Carey. To say that some people were not impressed with her performance in the movie would be putting it kindly.
8 Resident Evil: Afterlife ($300m)
Resident Evil: Afterlife is the fourth movie adaptation of the Resident Evil series and marked the return of Paul W. S. Anderson to the director’s chair. Although filming took place primarily in Toronto, much of the movie’s plot takes place in Tokyo and this helped to boost the movie’s performance in the Japanese market. In total, the movie generated $55m in Japan, which was almost as much as it managed domestically.
It might have been a big hit in Japan and at the box office in general, but critics were once again unimpressed. The movie has a critic approval rating of just 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the second worst title in the series. That it’s also the series’ second highest grossing entry likely softens that blow a little though.
7 Sonic The Hedgehog ($306m)
Fans were a little worried when the first trailer for the blue blur’s silver-screen debut dropped. Thankfully, Sega addressed these concerns by making some tweaks to Sonic‘s design. The resulting movie did enough to impress both fans and critics with it currently holding a critic approval rating of 63% and a hugely impressive 93% audience score over on Rotten Tomatoes.
More importantly, perhaps, Sonic the Hedgehog performed incredibly well domestically and currently holds the record for the best ever opening weekend for a video game movie. Unfortunately, its performance in China was way below expectations, but considering the world is in the middle of a global pandemic, its box office returns are impressive nonetheless.
6 Resident Evil: The Final Chapter ($312m)
The much maligned Resident Evil movies have always performed strongly in spite of their generally poor reception from fans and critics. Together, they’ve brought in more than a billion dollars and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is responsible for a good chunk of that.
The movie owes much of its success to the Chinese market, which was responsible for more than half of its box office total. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t go down quite so well with Western audiences, with its critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes currently sitting at just 37% after 100 reviews.
5 Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time ($336m)
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time features some big names and, as a result, was able to generate some big numbers. It holds the record for the fifth highest opening for a video game movie and went on to surpass four of the five titles ahead of it with a box office total of $336m.
Despite its strong box office showing though, the move failed to impress critics. Sands of Time has a Rotten Tomatoes critic approval rating of just 37%. Viewers were a little more forgiving, giving it an average score of 58%. The movie’s strong home media performance followed this pattern too, with the DVD and Blu-Ray releases generating an additional $34m in revenue in the six months following their release.
4 The Angry Birds Movie ($352m)
On paper, a movie about a video game as simplistic as Angry Birds should never have worked. The games feature no real plot and a mechanic that, although enjoyable to begin with, gets old pretty quickly. It’s therefore a good job for Columbia Pictures that movies are not played out on paper.
Some reports suggest that Sony Entertainment splashed out around $100m to market and distribute the movie and this likely played a big part in the movie’s success. The Angry Birds Movie generated $352m in box office revenue which lead to a net profit of around $72m. This makes it the most successful Finnish movie of all time by a considerable margin. The birds might be angry, but those involved with the film’s production and distribution were probably pretty happy about that.
3 Rampage ($428m)
Many gamers have probably never heard of Midway’s Rampage series. For this reason, it seemed to many like a pretty strange choice for a movie adaption. Strange as the choice may have been though, it turned out to be a pretty good one. The movie might not have impressed critics too much, but it sure did sell a lot of tickets.
Warner Brothers invested a significant amount of money into the production and marketing of the movie and this proved to be a risk worth taking. Rampage did exceptionally well in China, grossing $156m and becoming the studio’s second best performing movie in the region to date.
2 Detective Pikachu ($433m)
Detective Pikachu was the first live action Pokémon movie ever made and was loosely based on the 3DS title of the same name. Ryan Reynolds played the titular character and in true Ryan Reynolds fashion, he completely stole the show. Warner Brothers were presumably confident of the movie’s ability to perform at the box office, as demonstrated by their decision to greenlight a sequel months before Detective Pikachu‘s theatrical debut.
As it happens, they were right to be optimistic. The movie had the best ever opening for a video game movie – although this is a record that it would only hold onto for one year. While Sonic may have overtaken Pikachu in the short-term, the blue blur was unable to keep up in the long run. A strong performance in the Chinese market would go on to give Detective Pikachu an insurmountable lead.
1 Warcraft ($439m)
It’s perhaps no surprise that one of the biggest video game franchises of all time is responsible for the highest-grossing video game movie. Warcraft might not have been too popular with movie critics, but fans of the series couldn’t get enough of it. Its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes stands at 76%, making it one of the most popular video game movies on the site.
An incredible box office return backed up the movie’s strong audience approval ratings. While its domestic performance was fairly underwhelming, Warcraft generated a monstrous $225m in the Chinese market. With numbers like that, it’s easy to see why Activision Blizzard values the Chinese market so highly.
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