As expected, Universal & Legendary pushed the release date of the Warcraft movie after new Star Wars decided to share the previous release date of December 18, 2015. You can’t compete with Star Wars and it was already late in the year date so the best way is to move it forward few months and that is exactly what happened.
New release date is March 11, 2016.
Haters will probably say that movie is now doomed since no good movies come in pre blockbuster season, but lets look at the positive aspects of the March release date. Since they are planning to make a franchise out of Warcraft, the first movie simple can’t flop on the box office. First 3 months of the year are usually for “not high hopes” movies and indie stuff so competition will for sure be much easier then if they went during the summer or against Star Wars or similar well established franchises. They are not really aiming for Oscars to go with late year release date as a must, so moving forward is best decision they could make.
It’s going to be less likely for movie to financially flop, which is really important for first movie when you are thinking about making more then one, despite the other expensive movies in last couple of years that flopped in that period of year, but some of those were just bad marketing or simple not really good ones so they were put in those months to have better chance to return the investment. It’s not like people stop watching movies until May :)
Also Duncan Jones recently removed himself from some projects to devote all his time to Warcraft movie, which is a good sign that he is serious about it.
