1mo ago

After a disastrous opening, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim heads to digital on Dec 27th

From Dark Horizons:

After New Line Cinema’s anime feature “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” debuted to a disastrously low $4.5 million in its opening weekend in cinemas on December 13th, and then fell a steep 72% to just $1.25 million this past weekend, the title is being made available on digital at home on December 27th.

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I thought it was going straight to streaming to begin with. This is the first I heard about it even being in theaters.
- This is the first I heard about it at all.
  Just checked, it's in one theater an hour and a half away from me. That combined with it being an animation, no wonder it did poorly.
- Same. I thought it was going to be an animated series.
- I didn't know it existed until I saw a poster for it in the cinema a couple of weeks ago. You'd think they would have actually spent more than a few pennies on marketing

As someone who was eagerly anticipating this movie and saw it in theaters, it's a shame that it ended up having a terrible box office gross. I thought it was really good, and I appreciated the fact that I got to see 2D animation on the big screen again.
I think the best-case scenario for Rohirrim is that it blows up on streaming and digital.
- In that case, it makes me wonder if some exec is trying to pull a Treasure Planet again.
  Edit: now with link directly to the relevant video timestamp.
- I will counter that there has been plenty of 2D animation on the big screen lately and a lot of it Japanese in origin. Thisnt isn't that unique and I think the crossover isn't as big as once hoped.
  We are talking a similar audience as to that The Boy and the Heron.

Saw it in theatre on sunday and it was good. Not amazing but definitely better than the series.
Problem is no one knows it even exists. They probably didn’t know how they should promote this thing. It’s a movie for enthusiasts.
- Agreed. I only knew about it from a post here on Lemmy. No one that I mentioned it to IRL (including other LotR fans) had even heard of it. Took my son-in-law to see it in theater and enjoyed it.
- I just heard about something LoR as an anime and when I went to the cinema to watch Gladiator 2 I noticed a screening note for this movie. I didnt notice any poster outside about this movie. Nothing.

Wow! I’m looking forward to seeing it in theaters, but the holidays are always hard for me to make time for a movie showing.
To be fair I’d have never known it was a thing if it wasn’t for Lemmy or seeing the poster in the theater hallway when I saw Moana 2.

I've never heard of it. I'm a huge LOTR fan though, is this respectful of the source material?

This sounds like it was an awards run and they just wanted to get some money back.
I do think Amazon is trying to mark themselves as the home for Lord of the Rings which is only slightly funny since it's literally everything around it that they were actually able to buy the rights to.
- This was made so the studio could keep the rights. There's a press release by New Line Cinema out there basically confirming it.
  
  Content as Product

Sad to hear. Though it always felt like a hard sell TBH, just a bit niche for todays cinema world.

Happy to see another anime adaptation no one wanted fail

I thought it was fun! Falls into a couple glup shitto pitfalls but nowhere near in the same way The Hobbit movies did, and my fears that it would be too Shadow of Mordor-y did not come to fruition

Saw it in the theater ... Meh, a 6 out of 10 I think. Plot was kinda contrived. But there are some beautiful shots in there, the opening with the eagles on the mountain, gorgeous.
It was ok, but nothing outstanding

I feel like if they had made the bold move to animate in a more stylized fashion it might have fared better. The fairly generic anime look implies a fairly generic storytelling, accurate or not.

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