We picked 10 videogame movies and found out how much each earned at box-offices worldwide. We were pretty gobsmacked to find out just how lucrative some of them have been...
Has the honour of being the most successful game-to-movie adaptation at the box office EVER. Perhaps not surprising given Lara Croft's iconic status and Angelina Jolie's incredible hotness. It was universally pissed upon by critics. Still, that didn't stop it making more money at cinemas than The Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yeah, we're not sure we can believe it either.
The original made Paramount a nice little packet. The sequel? Not so much. It still had a pretty lavish budget so execs were obviously a bit sad about the diminished returns. Paramount tried to blame the dramatic downturn on the recognised crapness of Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. But everyone knew it was just because the first film was a lot of dump. To avoid further embarrassment and pain, Paramount put the kibosh on a planned third Lara Croft film.
The most successful of the Resi trilogy, the second film made a considerable amount of moolah at the box office on a pretty modest budget. And that's despite the fact that Milla Jovovich was pretty much the film's only redeeming feature. It wasn't very good, but it still motivated more people to shamble to the cinema than most other zombie flicks you could mention. More than any Romero film. More than Zack Snyder's 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake. More than 28 Days Later. More than Shaun of the Dead. Between them the three Resident Evil movies have grossed a total of $379,553,746. Which is a lot of money.
Below average martial arts pantomime piece starring Christopher Lambert that cashed in nicely on the continuing fuss surrounding the games. Kids went along hoping to see spine-ripping fatalities, but just got a lot of PG-13 weakness. In US cinemas it actually did more business than Tarantino's deliciously violent Kill Bill. Worldwide it's made more than Jackie Chan 'funny' Shanghai Noon and even grossed $21 million more than Stephen Chow's stupidly good Kung Fu Hustle. There is no justice. A new MK movie is currently scheduled for 2010.
No one had heard of director Xavier Gens and lead actor Timothy Olyphant is no Brad Pitt. So, given that the only people who would have any interest at all in this movie would be gamers - and maybe anyone with a lust for bald-headed bar-coded killers - the $100 million box-office bucks surely has to be seen as a more than satisfactory return. In comparison, assassination flick Lucky Number Slevin made $56 million at box-offices and that starred Bruce Willis, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu, Josh Hartnett and Morgan Freeman.
