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Forums - Gaming - Sam Raimi directing Warcraft movie

gergroy on 22 July 2009

At the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo, then-Vivendi Games owned Blizzard Entertainment revealed a World of Warcraft movie was in the works. Legendary Entertainment, the production company behind The Dark Knight and the in-development Gears of War film, was the company lucky enough to land the project. At BlizzCon the following year, Legendary CEO Thomas Tull announced the film would be a live-action $100 million-budget epic, with a target release date of 2009.

 

Sam Raimi.

 

However, as the appointed year began, little had been heard about the World of Warcraft movie--other than it would not be directed by Uwe Boll. Late Tuesday, though, Legendary, Blizzard, and distributor Warner Bros., officially announced the first film set in the Warcraft universe has finally found a director--and it's not Steven Spielberg.

Instead, the filmmaker in question is Sam Raimi, director of the multibillion-dollar-grossing Spider-Man films and the horror cult classics Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. His most recent effort was this year's Drag Me to Hell, a horror thriller which won critical acclaim despite a PG-13 rating and so-so box office returns. The Warcraft film will be produced by Atlas Entertainment's Charles "Chuck" Roven, Legendary's Tull, and Raimi producing partner Joshua Donen. Blizzard Entertainment's Senior Vice President of Creative Development Chris Metzen will co-produce.

"Partnering with Sam Raimi exemplifies Legendary's mandate of marrying the highest quality intellectual property to world-class filmmakers" said Tull in a statement. "Sam's passion for Warcraft is undeniable and we know that he will create an incredible film worthy of Blizzard's phenomenal franchise."

"Warcraft is emblematic of the kind of branded, event films for which our studio is best known. We have enjoyed great success with our partners at Legendary, and this is an incredible opportunity for us to work with Sam on a project that is so eagerly anticipated by so many," Warner Bros. Pictures Group president Jeff Robinov declared in a statement.

Interestingly, today's announcement refers to the project as the "major motion picture based on Blizzard Entertainment’s award-winning Warcraft universe." The term "World of Warcraft" is only mentioned in the footnotes of the release when referring to the "rich fantasy setting" of the game series, which began in 1996 with the real-time strategy game Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Currently, World of Warcraft is the top massively multiplayer role-playing game in the world, accruing nearly 13 million subscribers worldwide since its launch in late 2004. No release date for the Warcraft film has yet been announced.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6213782.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;1

i'm just glad a well known director is atually doing a video game movie.  What do you guys think?



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snyperdud on 22 July 2009

He's not bad director, at all.
Uwe Boll isn't directing it, so this movie is already off to a good start.



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gergroy on 22 July 2009
snyperdud said:
He's not bad director, at all.
Uwe Boll isn't directing it, so this movie is already off to a good start.

lol, I remember how blizzard responded to Uwe when he tried to get them to let him direct it.  I laughed for a long time. :)



heruamon on 22 July 2009

This is the best news EVER for a game franchise!



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damkira on 22 July 2009

I don't care what anybody says, Drag Me To Hell was a good movie... the story was a bit cliched but what do you expect from that genre?



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Esmoreit on 22 July 2009

Wait, how did Drag me to Hell get a PG-13 rating? I am a horror fan and I was morbified by the film.

Long story short, awesome director choice. Though I owuld hope that they'd rathr base the storyon the strategy-universe rather then the MMORPG universe.



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Naum on 22 July 2009

The only thing worse then a warcraft movie would be a warcraft movie directed by Uwe bold...



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JaggedSac on 22 July 2009

Cool. I like Raimi.



mibuokami on 22 July 2009

This is being done by Legendary Pictures who were behind the excellent 300, the Batman reboot and Watchmen, this might be the first game to movie conversion that can recieve both critical and box office success.




gergroy on 22 July 2009
mibuokami said:

This is being done by Legendary Pictures who were behind the excellent 300, the Batman reboot and Watchmen, this might be the first game to movie conversion that can recieve both critical and box office success.


as long as Raimi doesn't spiderman 3 it :)  but I don't think that will happen, he has proven that he can do the dark stories.  I just wish he had done that with the venom story... but this isn't spiderman.  Like I said before, I'm just glad that I have herd of him :)