Sam Raimi Directing 'World of Warcraft' Movie?

The biggest directing announcement in quite a while has to be this one: Sam Raimi is going to make the World of Warcraft movie. That's according to Ain't It Cool News. Apparently, Raimi isn't going to stick his toe back in the pool of smaller horror movies for a while after the so-so commercial response to Drag Me to Hell. The bad news there is that, if this story holds up, then another two years at least will pass until we could conceivably see that fourth Evil Dead movie. That certainly makes those hopes even dimmer. The good news, obviously, is that Sam Raimi and not some jackass will direct the World of Warcraft movie. Blizzard has taken its sweet time bringing this project to life, and that's understandable to a point. It will cost lots of money, has lots of fans, and presents lots of ways for this sort of thing to go wrong. Obviously, the action should be great, but you'd want to see how the MMORPG translates to a movie structurally. Of course, with the way Raimi has burned through screenwriters for Spider-Man 4, there's no telling how many directions a screenplay for Warcraft to go. Still, initially, you have to consider this great goddamn news.

Comments

[Asana]

World of Warcraft and the rts games that preceded it are well supported by in depth background stories or "lore" as it were. In that sense, there's much more to go on than just translating base gameplay into a movie (ala DOOM) and trying to cobble a story around it. Yet even with a solid set of stories to adapt from and Raimi at the helm, Warcraft's biggest hurdle will be in pulling off believable live-action.

Many fans of the popular mmo have long expressed doubts that it could be successfully done with suggestions that Blizzard go the way of its own igame cinematics... all computer generated. Blizzard has balked at the idea claiming it to be too time consuming and expensive. However if you look at Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within or the similar work in one of the Animatrix short films Final Flight of The Osiris, it's easy to see where a Warcraft film could be pulled off remarkably well. It's their call though and perfectionists that they are, if the film even remotely looks like it won't be up to par it will get nixed faster than you can say Starcraft: Ghost.

[Get The Big Picture]

I agree with all of that; I do think, though, that the story could be problematic because of how expansive the game is designed to be. There are certainly story arcs they can use, but making it a "movie" story that also appeals to one of the biggest fan bases in the video game arena is a delicate task.

[Al.O]

This looks promising but what he did with some of the Spider-man movies isn't the reason why this movie will be good.

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[Asana]

Oh I can easily see where the story might be problematic to do Warcraft justice as a one off. The smart money might be to plan it as a trilogy then again they're taking forever to get any traction under the first film. From the looks of it Raimi won't get to really work on this before 2012 which means a film to land in that year or the next. That's one heck of a long wait time for a film about a game that by most accounts has already reached its apex. Will Warcraft still be gaming's mega-monolith by the time its film hits theaters? Hard to say and the chance to strike while the iron is hot is slipping away.

[Celsius]

Fantastic! Now every World of Warcraft gamer has something to look forward to in the big screen. Who would have thought that this speculation would finally come true. I wonder if Death Knights will be included already and if Raimi would include scenes of what's happening in the virtual world like trading, grinding wow gold and raiding.