What Went Wrong? ‘The War of the Rohirrim’ Vanished From Theaters Too Fast
Despite high expectations from Lord of the Rings fans, The War of the Rohirrim struggled to find its audience, with its anime-style animation, lack of familiar characters, and limited marketing contributing to its brief and underwhelming theatrical run.
By Nina Sterle
Lord of the Rings fans and lovers of animated movies alike rejoiced over the release of The War of the Rohirrim in 2024. Slated for December of last year, the movie worked with a relatively low budget (especially compared to other Lord of the Rings films) and hoped to create a thrilling spinoff to the original trilogy. However, die-hard Lord of the Rings fans noted early on that the film was only slated to stay in theaters for a week or two at a time, and the animated feature never returned to major movie theaters after its short run in December.
Unfortunately, not everyone was quite as receptive to the new spinoff as Warner Bros. had hoped. Though it had the name of the infamous Lord of the Rings trilogy behind it, its animated style was the first thing that threw people off when they saw the trailer. It’s far from the original live-action films in nature, and the fact that it took on an anime style ended up alienating more of its target audience than the studio initially expected.
While the film itself looked promising, it also lost members of its target audience due to the fact that it didn’t focus on any of the characters from the original Lord of the Rings. It took its own liberties with Tolkien’s original world, acting as a prequel to the Lord of the Rings. While this would definitely have flown had The War of the Rohirrim been a live-action film rather than an animated one, this only succeeded in disappointing more of its intended audience.
It seems that fans of the original movies would have been able to handle one or the other – an unrelated prequel or an animated film related to the original trilogy – but not both. Unfortunately, The War of the Rohirrim also failed to attract new audience members because its advertising primarily focused on being heavily related to Lord of the Rings.
Generally, it also didn’t dedicate enough time or budget to advertising, which led to low turnout when it finally released in theaters. Some fans were disappointed at the level of creativity involved in the prequels, which many deemed as unworthy of being considered canon. It also received devastatingly low rating, dropping straight to 49% on Rotten Tomatoes and a mediocre 6.4 out of 10 on IMDB. Because of its initial weekend flop and initial low budget from the studio, The War of the Rohirrim didn’t survive in theaters more than a week in most places.
It’s disappointing to see such a creative movie take its place with other recent box office bombs , but its failure can be attributed to the fact that it just didn’t appeal to its core audience enough to garner ticket sales when it first launched in theaters.
