With his role as Ragnar Lothbrok Travis Fimmel had his big breakthrough in the series Vikings. The character was so popular with many fans that they clung to Ragnar even years after Fimmel left the series.
In 2016, the Australian actor starred in his first major cinema blockbuster In the video game adaptation of Warcraft: The Beginning, Travis Fimmel can be seen as knight Anduin Lothar. At the box office, however, Duncan Jones’ film floppedIn an interview, the director revealed how much the studio interfered with his vision.
Warcraft flop: The fantasy blockbuster had to endure 1000 cuts
One of the reasons why Warcraft was a million-dollar loss for the studio is the long wait between the announcement and the release of the film. A film adaptation of the Warcraft games was first announced in 2006. By the time the film was released in 2016, it had gone through around a difficult phase lasting three and a half years from preparations, delays, filming and post-production.
Universal
Travis Fimmel and lots of CGI orcs in Warcraft: The Beginning
In an interview with Thrillist, director Duncan Jones, himself a huge Warcraft fan, talked about the arduous fight against Studio interventions on his personal vision of the blockbuster:
If you try to make a film like Warcraft and do it in a unique way, you die a death by 1,000 cuts. Not just cuts for editing. They’re small changes that seem really innocuous. As a filmmaker, I just understand how to make a film holistically. Every choice I make, whether it’s a story, a character, a costume, works together. When you make a small change, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. When you make those small changes, especially over three and a half years, suddenly you’re spending all your time trying to figure out how to fix what’s been messed with.
The long wait for the film, through which the Hype about Warcraft somewhat missed was, in combination with bad reviews are probably the main reasons why Warcraft: The Beginning was such a financial disappointment.
After Vikings and Warcraft, Netflix has another Travis Fimmel series
If you’d rather watch something good with Travis Fimmel instead of Warcraft, you’ll also find it on Netflix. He released his latest series, Boy Swallows Universe, there in early 2024, which received good reviews and was also rated 7.3 out of 10 by you.
In it, he plays stepfather Lyle in the life of a troubled family and tries, more or less, to keep the family afloat as a drug dealer.