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Sam Raimi To Direct World of Warcraft Movie
Decado writes "Blizzard has just announced that Sam Raimi is to direct the new World of Warcraft movie. 'Raimi, acclaimed director of the blockbuster Spider-Man series, will bring the forces of the Horde and the Alliance to life in epic live-action film. Charles Roven's Atlas Entertainment will produce alongside Raimi's Stars Road Entertaiment.' While it's still early in the process, does this offer hope that someone might finally make a good movie based on a game IP?"
... this film gonna be bad... like so many other film based on a game... I can't even name one good film based from a game.
Maybe it's just a feeling...
I can't call that English
I can't imagine remotely what this movie will actually be like. But I suspect it will suck.
Not only that, they'd have to leave their parent's basement.
I think the DVD and Blu-Ray sales are going to be through the roof!
Raimi is WAY past his prime. But then, so is WoW.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It'll be told almost entirely in flashbacks to reproduce the grind experience to cater to the hardcore fans. There are plans to do a 10 minute edited version for the non fans
However the budget-challenged, direct-to-video sequel to the D&D movie, although not a masterpiece of storytelling, actually managed to capture the feel and pace of playing an old-fashioned late-1st edition D&D game of high level (9th-10th level) characters. If they've continued churning out a series of films in that style, I would have happily bought them up.
Good luck seeing any movies in the next...ever. I'm not even trying to be cynical. It's a simple fact that everything is a rehash of something else. A good portion of the original Star Trek episodes were takes of various Shakespeare plays. The original Battlestar Galactica was mostly re-tellings of various movie plot lines. I took a lit class in college years ago and the prof said something that's stuck with me since - there are only 7 original plot lines to a narrative/story, everything else just changes setting and mixes up the characters a bit. Now, take that with a grain of salt, as I have no links to support that claim.
So we're judging quality by how much money is gained through effective marketing now? That's lovely. By your logic, Star Wars Episode 1 was _amazing_!
There is major error in the article title, summary, and even very nearly every article out there on the net. To demonstrate, let's go to the actual source of the information, the Blizzard press release.
The error is this: the movie is not a World of Warcraft movie. The movie is a Warcraft movie. It's a movie set in the Warcraft universe, not one based on the World of Warcraft game. You're right, out of necessity WoW is fairly static - that's how it is that you have content that's consumed again and again by various and even the same players. However the Warcraft universe is not static.
Especially if you play through the Warcraft III original and expansion games, you'll discover that Blizzard actually has a real talent for telling a story. They even go so far as to kill or dramatically change major characters. Watch the progression of Arthas from human paladin to undead lieutenant to rogue undead eventually to becoming the Lich King. See how they killed Grom Helscream in an epic battle, or how they killed Sylvanas Windrunner and brought her back as Lady Sylvanas, queen of the rogue undead.
Blizzard has an extremely rich lore in the Warcraft universe, and this is fertile ground for a movie or even a series of movies. They've already demonstrated their cinematic prowess and story writing abilities in the in-game and pre-rendered cutscenes in Warcraft III and Diablo II. There's no particular reason to think they would do worse than that with a bigger budget associated with a movie.
A movie based on World of Warcraft would be crap. A movie based on Warcraft though, that has real promise.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
I wouldn't normally be terribly interested in a WoW movie, but if Sam Raimi does it, well, perhaps. It's certainly millions of times better than Uwe Boll or Michael Bay. Raimi knows how to make movies fun.
Sure, any wow player can take a few hours out of their tuesday morning to watch the movie, as long as it doesn't extend past 11am pst, there's no problem.