Blizzard, Legendary, and Warner Bros. announce
Spider-Man director will helm the long-in-the-works big-screen
version of Blizzard's genre-dominating MMORPG.
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.
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 12 million
subscribers worldwide since its launch in late 2004. No release
date for the Warcraft film has yet been announced.
Finally they got a director..