Blizzard Entertainment President Johanna Faries shared that she and the company are looking at expanding beyond video games and into other mediums again.
Speaking with Windows Central, Faries was asked if the company was open to having its various IPs adapted to film, TV, or animation given the recent commercial successes of Nintendo’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie and animated shows such as Arcane and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
She answered, “The short answer is, we're looking at everything, and I mean that very intentionally — and I can't share anything specific today — but we talked again as recently as yesterday, that we have a strong collective belief that we are Blizzard Entertainment, and not simply Blizzard Games or Blizzard Gaming.”
“Our universes, our iconic IP can vector off into many interesting dynamic directions,” she continued. “We have to be thoughtful, responsible stewards of those franchises, right? Not everything will fit, and execution absolutely matters. We do think about what we can do to show up for the entertainment industry, as broadly as we can describe, so Blizzard can continue to be a beacon of that sort of ... magic making, fostering joy.”
She then explained a little bit of her entire vision for the company, “Blizzard's core foundational level is making world class games, but some people will go to BlizzCon and have their life changed. Meet their life partner. Some people will have a reunion gathering and watch that old Warcraft movie. That's part of what it means to stay in culture, and continue to shape it. So absolutely, that's the lens we're looking through here.”
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The Warcraft film arrived in box offices back in 2016 and grossed just $47.3 million domestically, but added another $391.5 million internationally for a global gross of $438.8 million.
The film reportedly had a $160 million production budget meaning the film might have made a small profit given a film typically needs to make 2.5x its budget to break even, which would be $400 million. However, given $213.5 million of the international box office was from China and studios do not get as big of a cut in China (25%), it’s likely the film actually lost money.
Would you be interested in any Blizzard IPs getting adaptations?
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You have to admire this corpospeak in a way, don't you? Talking as though Blizzcon is where magic happens at every corner. "Go there, you basement dweller and meet your future wife!"
Now what are the chances of that? Shall we use a bit of common sense, unlike what the Joanna Fairy's PR team prepared? Over the years, Blizzcon has been attended by almost 300 thousand people. 284k, to be more precise. Is it possible that a guy met his future wife there? Why, of course it is! Is it possible that this is a predictable pattern affecting a statistically non-negligible share of the Blizzcon sample? Why, you silly Fairy goose, of course it isn't!
When your marketing department picks a random story in a newspaper and goes "this is good, let's spin this into something!", people should be extra careful. The point is: no, this is not a special place. No, this is not reality. This is just one C-suit spinning a random story out of any relevant context. To mask their corrupting DEI practices enforced by DEI commissars sitting at every creative desk.