Saturday November 21, 2009 6:56 PM AEST

Sam Raimi set to direct World of Warcraft movie

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Sam Raimi set to direct World of Warcraft movie
By Justin Robinson
Jul 23, 2009 | 18 Comments
Tags: Sam | Raimi | World | of | Warcraft | movie | spiderman

WoW fans soon to be sated by Sam Raimi's movie talent.

Warcraft isn't exactly one of the first games you'd think of when you sit down to plan out a movie, but the reasoning behind choosing this one is incredibly solid. With the huge amount of lore and story behind the gameworld that spans from the Warcraft RTS games and the incredibly popular MMO World of Warcraft, there's a lot of material to draw from.

No movie can be made without a director though, and in a press release churned out by Blizzard Entertainment yesterday they've announced that Sam Raimi has come aboard to lend his expertise. Raimi has directed other nerdly films such as Evil Dead, but he's best known for the superhero-filled Spiderman series.

Though Raimi is currently busy working on Spiderman 4 (which we hope is better than the dreadful Spiderman 3), he'll be working alongside executive producer Robert Tapert later in the year to get started on the World of Warcraft film. Tapert has actually produced quite a few movies including The Grudge and other horror films, potentially meaning that the Warcraft movie could be quite dark.

Blizzard seem incredibly confident in their choices here, and their release goes to lengths to make sure we know how awesome both Raimi and Warcraft are:

"Blizzard Entertainment and Legendary Pictures have a shared vision for this film and we searched at length to find the very best director to bring that vision to life," said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. "From our first conversation with Sam, we could tell he was the perfect choice. Sam knows how to simultaneously satisfy the enthusiasts and the mainstream audience that might be experiencing that content for the first time. We're looking forward to working with him to achieve that here."

We caught wind of a Lost Planet movie earlier this year, and more recently a Green Lantern flick, so the near future seems to be a pretty good time to be a game and comic fan. While the Warcraft movie is incredibly light on details for now (like plot and other essential things), we're looking forwards to the movie when it is completed. Are you?

 

 
 
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18 Comments
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
kikz
Jul 23, 2009 11:30 AM
yay!
hectorbustnuts
Jul 23, 2009 11:33 AM
I hope it's NOTHING like the game.

Otherwise it'll just be two and a bit hours of tedious boredom.

predator88
Jul 23, 2009 11:43 AM
really? really? come on...is it really needed.... but then again Sam Raimi has made some good movies...
TheFrunj
Jul 23, 2009 11:49 AM
Perhaps it'll feature a grinding segment, where the lead characters kill whole legions of level one rats :D

There's been some musings about possibly featuring Arthas (pictured), so who knows.

-JR
MagnumXY
Jul 23, 2009 12:08 PM
I'm getting +10 on my movie smithing.
Hawkeye
Jul 23, 2009 12:28 PM
To be fair to this, Warcraft does have a rich backstory. I mean, Arthas' history alone could make an epic film.
smakme7757
Jul 23, 2009 2:18 PM
There is a multitude of warcraft novels, comics and games and with such a fleshed out story everything is already set in place for the director he just needs to execute it well.

Personally if this is done right i think it could entertain almost everyone as long as they have an interest in the fantasty genre.
Ashlar
Jul 23, 2009 2:47 PM
LoL!
Well, with the millions of subscribers they *know* they have the fan base there to make money from the film.
Expect at least 3. :P

As Hawkeye and smakme775 said, Warcraft does have a lot of lore and very extensive backstory.

All depends how well they deliver it, I guess.


-A-
SquallStrife
Jul 23, 2009 3:16 PM
Thanks for the link, Justin. ( http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000600/ )

From this we see that Raimi is directing and producing Spiderman 4, but was a WRITER on Spiderbortion 3. Fail.

In fact, he's been involved in a whole gamut of really average movies, lightly dusted with a handful of quite OK zombie movies.

Eh. Maybe he can pull it off. I'm not excited at all though.
SlickGrunt
Jul 23, 2009 4:53 PM
JJ Abrams surprised me with Star Trek, so mr Sam Raimi may in fact surprise me with Warcraft.

And I pray Guilermo Del Toro surprises me with the Hobbit, otherwise I'll be seriously unhappy.

Can't wait to see who's in the casting - imagine Vin Diesel is an Orc :P that'd be great! He's got the right voice and build for it.

"Moral is; don't be a dick, DICK!" - xXx
Hoonbernator
Jul 23, 2009 5:25 PM
LOL I can imagine the movie about trying to get a 40 man raid together and having people get ganked on the way in, people screw up pulls, poor healing, people leave mid fight and others roll on loot that they cant use.
tunksy
Jul 23, 2009 6:22 PM
never played WoW but have played Warcraf 3..twice i think... but hopefully with rich back story and a slightly decent director in Rimi, we will see a decent movie I for one, hope the story is dark...just to be a lil' more complling to those that really dont know a thing about warcaft *yes like me* but also to those unaware of how silly WoW is.
tunksy
Jul 23, 2009 6:24 PM
*adds another thought, yes thats the noise!*

the magic and stuff (if to be used in the movie) HAS to be better than the anti climatic Kameha(cant spell it)Wave in the Dragon Ball live action movie.
fredzfrog
Jul 24, 2009 11:33 AM
/me waits for leroy jenkins cameo.. no leroy, no ticket sale from thes little green frog.. :P
Catmosphere
Jul 24, 2009 11:03 PM
I really can't see this working... but I guess we'll see.
Athiril
Jul 25, 2009 2:29 PM
What Dragon Ball movie? Oh you mean the Avatar movie called Revolution?
Rory K
Aug 31, 2009 6:49 PM
No, the Dragon Ball Z live action movie.
elmo198
Aug 31, 2009 9:20 PM
what drug are you lot smoking these days? why the hell do you think that warcraft movie will even be anything about the game? the game is a game.

this movie as mentioned earlier, if done right, like all other movies in hollywood, done right, will rock. I love fantasy genre. Lord of the ring, robin hood, dragonheart and all that stuff. is great idea. the amount of story there are in warcraft. they only need to pick a segment and display it, the rest can be warcraft 2 the movie and so forth.
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