'Warcraft' Update from Sam Raimi

Collider has a good long interview with Sam Raimi on the red carpet at the Saturn Awards. Here's what matters most, though: He talks Warcraft, and I believe for the first time. Raimi was announced as the director of the highly anticipated video game film last year, but it was believed at the time it would have to wait until after Spider-Man 4 and possibly even another Evil Dead movie (which I doubt will ever happen). But he's not doing Spidey now, although the director did recently attach himself to Oz: The Great and Powerful.

"We're still working on the story right now," Raimi confirmed. "We've got a 40-page document that needs a lot more work, but every draft that we do with Robert Rodat gets better and better." The difficulty, in my mind, is paring down something that, by design, is supposed to be remarkably expansive. It's part of the reason video game movies don't work well -- what fun is a game that only lasts 90 minutes?

"We're finding the characters and through the characters we're finding the story. There's no real angle on it - we're trying to create interesting characters that can live in the World of Warcraft, as though you are in the game itself, in one, or two, or three of those environments, and see the interaction with those great mythical, iconic characters."

Click to read more ...

Sam Raimi Not Necessarily Doing 'Warcraft' Next

Last week, Sam Raimi and Sony parted company on Spider-Man 4, bringing to an end one of the most lucrative studio-director partnerships in the most lucrative decade for such things. They couldn't agree on what to do next, to make a long story short, so Sony is starting over and Raimi's moving on to other stuff.

Many observers believe his next film will be Warcraft, and we wrote a bit about that scuttlebutt a few days back. However, Warcraft producer Robert Tapert isn't so sure. "It's in development," he tell iF Magazine about the long-awaited video game adaptation. "We're in the outline/story/script phase."

Click to read more ...

What's Next for 'Spider-Man' and Sam Raimi?

On Monday, Sony scrapped Spider-Man 4. Unbelievable. With the amount of success Sony and Sam Raimi have found over the years, to reach this much discord on script issues and shooting schedules doesn't really make a lot of sense to the franchise's audience. Still, reaction to the move has ranged - at least on this site - from happy to hopeful. Maybe the series can be salvaged because they won't do the same things again.

Entertainment Weekly says Sony will aim for 2012, rebooting the series "in a more contemporary setting," with Peter Parker a teenager again going through his origin story. The word "gritty" is being thrown around, and some of our readers debated the merits of that kind of thing when we reported on the end of the Raimi years. I'm not for it, because there are plenty of comic book characters already trying to be Batman. This one needs to try to be Spider-Man. EW places three names in the director's chair, although it's way too early to have a handle on that. Marc Webb of (500) Days of Summer has been mentioned, and he's the cheapest. Gary Ross was brought in to write a draft of the doomed fourth film, and then there's Michael Bay. Yep. I'm sure you remember when Spidey fought all those hot chicks throwing firebombs.

Click to read more ...

Sam Raimi Names 'Warcraft' Screenwriter

Sam Raimi divulged a little bit of information about the highly anticipated World of Warcraft movie adaptation during a phone interview last week with MTV. In addition to laying out a general blueprint for how the movie will operate, he always named a screenwriter.

Robert Rodat - best known for his Saving Private Ryan screenplay - will write the script for the film, which will just be called Warcraft. What we won't get is a familiar story, but rather a concept that works as a movie within the, well, world of Warcraft.

Click to read more ...

World Shrugs at Jennifer Love Hewitt's Request to Play Wonder Woman

We've been down this road before, where actors who have never been mentioned for an upcoming film project throw their hats in the ring, hoping to be involved down the line. I look at it like this: When you're a star the magnitude of Johnny Depp or Angelina Jolie, the press bleeds itself to pair your name to a Batman villain. When, on the other hand, you're Brian Austin Green, you have to shoehorn yourself into the discussion about playing The Riddler. It's kind of like saying, "Dude, I know she's your girlfriend, but if she wasn't..." Nobody asked you. Shut up.

There are two such meager requests today, one involving Wonder Woman and one involving World of Warcraft. When asked about recovering her film career after the stablizing influence of her show The Ghost Whisperer, Jennifer Love Hewitt told MTV, "I want to play Wonder Woman really badly. I want them to make the movie of Wonder Woman, and I want to play Wonder Woman so bad. That'd be really fun." I doubt it. There's no big push to get her back into theaters, and when they finally get off their ass and put a Wonder Woman movie together, it won't be for a 5'3" actress with limited action chops. Also, if you think they're going to give this role to a woman in her thirties, I would beg to differ. That's just the way studios operate.

Click to read more ...