Movies based on games have a bad reputation when it comes to quality and box office performance. Ratchet & Clank isn’t going to change that.
The animated film only made $4,823,000 in the U.S. during its debut weekend. For comparison, Disney’s Zootopia made $5,006,000 in its ninth weekend. Now, no one expected Ratchet & Clank to outperform a Disney movie, but it is disappointing that it couldn’t attract more of the family audience when its main competition has been in theaters for over two months. The film has also been doing poorly with critics. Only 19 percent of its reviews are positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Oddly, this all comes as excitement for the game series is rising. The latest entry (which shares the same name and plot as the movie and came out for the PlayStation 4 on April 12) has an average review of 86, according to Metacritic.
Ratchet & Clank is only the first notable game-based movie releasing this year. Warcraft launches on June 10, and Assassin’s Creed comes out on December 21. Those are both bigger projects based on more popular franchises, so they’ll have higher expectations than Ratchet & Clank. If they both bomb, it’ll be a long time before we see another video game franchise turned into a movie.
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