I gotta admit, I feel a little out of my depth with this blog post. My involvement with WoW could charitably be described as “casual”, although semi-catatonic would perhaps be more apt. And while I enjoy film as much as the next man, and can write the shit out of an undergraduate essay on cinema, my general knowledge of the field is shallow at best. See, this is the kind of post that Paul would usually stream into all guns blazing, armed with reams of history, opinion and tangentially connected anecdotes about his violent tendencies/paint-sniffing. Instead you get me. The man who cloaks his ignorance in needless verbosity. So rococo.
Anyway.
The WoW film has apparently been sputtering and spurting through the development process since 2007, but, for all of that, there is still almost no publicly available information about the project. The picture up top is the one piece of concept art to have leaked (but shit it looks good), and it’s thought that the film will be set a year before WoW kicks off and will be told from the perspective of the Alliance. And that’s pretty much it to date, despite the fact the film was originally slated for release some point this year. Whether this is due to Blizzard’s famously Stasi-esque levels of secrecy or more prosaic/profound issues on the film studio end of the ledger is open to question.
However, an article that dropped yesterday on Ain’t It Cool claims that Sam Raimi has been officially chosen to direct the purportedly $100 million film. And this is where my film knowledge comes careening into a big ol’ sack of ‘I have no idea’. I had to look up his Wikipedia article before I could name a film he’d previously been involved in, and then discovered that I haven’t even seen his primary claims to fame i.e. the Evil Dead and Spiderman series. So yes. Sam Raimi. Yay? Or not-yay?
Nonetheless, it’s going to be intriguing. Video games don’t exactly have the best history when it comes to film adaptation… Yes, that’s right, I’m looking at you Uwe Boll. Who, as rumour has it, was throwing ridiculous amounts of money Blizzard’s way to try and convince them to let him get involved in the WoW film. So, we, uh, dodged a bullet there.
And lest we forget where it all began either: Super Mario Bros. Shudder. As my brother would say “no-one comes out of that looking good”. Especially not Dennis Hopper:
Mmm. They better be playing that clip when he gets his lifetime achievement award.
/Luke
10 responses so far ↓
1 Aqualec // Jul 22, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I reckon the concept and idea behind this would be pretty cool.
I love watching the Feature clips that are in Games as well as the Trailers for the Games, and have always wanted to see even an hour of Warcraft like that.
I wonder though if they would go that way like those clips or go Live Action.
Also wonder if Bruce Campbell would make a cameo since Sam Raimi is directing.
2 Hamish // Jul 22, 2009 at 5:14 pm
So you’ve never heard of Sam Raimi, but you know of Uwe Boll?
That’s the kind of gaff that get’s undercover cops killed by gangs of nerds.
3 fishboy // Jul 22, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Just FYI: Sam Raimi = extreme yay.
4 Merus // Jul 22, 2009 at 6:31 pm
A friend of mine brought up a really great point: Lord of the Rings benefited greatly from Peter Jackson’s horror background, and Sam Raimi has a similar background in comic horror.
5 Cassie // Jul 23, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Sam Raimi- the man responsible for Emo-Spidey. (bad).
Sam Raimi- the man responsible for Spider Man 2 (good).
Just putting that out there.
6 Adam // Jul 23, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I don’t believe it’s a bad concept. The movie isn’t really based on the game, it’s based on lore and books. the games are based the same way, just allowing you to be yourself as the story unfolds. If it did begin with a game, then no take Hitman and Doom (shudder) for example.
7 luke // Jul 23, 2009 at 4:37 pm
@Adam: true that, there is a far more textured story line to draw upon than most video game adaptations. although that brings with it the attendant issue that they might just end up pissing all the players off by deviating too far from the original lore for the sake of the cinema experience. still, i’m vaguely hopeful.
8 blotto // Jul 25, 2009 at 1:27 pm
hmmmm is it just me or does an image of bruce cambell as a hunter come to mind waving a shot gun at some undead exclaiming “THIS IS MY BOOM STICK!”
9 Nerds of a Feather Wrap-up, July 28th! // Jul 28, 2009 at 8:20 am
[...] I talked about the new Sam Raimi announcement regarding the World of Warcraft film! Raimi has all the cinematic chutzpah needed to do this [...]
10 Finn Bakker // Jul 31, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Blotto: they already *did* that joke in Warcraft 3. Keep clicking on a dwarf artillery team, they will shout “THIS IS MAH BOOMSTICK!”. A specific ED reference. Of course, they also worked in Ghostbusters, Scarface, O Brother Where Art Thou, Top Gun, and other films.
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