Raimi + WoW

[Japher]

LINK

The man behind the "Spider-Man" movies is ready for war.

Sam Raimi, director of the top-grossing "Spider-Man" films, has signed on to direct a film adaptation of the wildly popular videogame "World of Warcraft," Variety.com reports.

"At its core, 'Warcraft' is a fantastic, action-packed story," Raimi said in a statement.

The director, who has headed up all the Spider-Man flicks including the upcoming "Spider-Man 4," is known for bringing three-dimensional life to the comic books characters. Now he's taking on material with an even less flesh and blood story: a videogame.

Raimi's most recent effort, "Drag Me to Hell," garnered critical praise as a fun, tightly-paced take on the horror genre, with Daily News critic Joe Neumaier writing, "This is how it's done."

The first three "Spider-Man" movies are all in the top-20 top grossing films of all time, with the original "Spider-Man" leading the franchise in the number 8 spot after raking in $407,681,000 in the U.S.

The upcoming World of Warcraft flick also likely has a built-in audience, starting with millions of fans of the game.

The movie will build off the videogame's central conflict, between the Horde and the Alliance.

Known as a multiplayer online role-playing game, players create a character avatar and interact with other players on the Web, forming guilds, fighting monsters, and amassing skills that help them complete quests.

First released in 1994, it's by far the dominant video game of its kind, with 11.5 million monthly subscribers.

"Wrath of the Lich King," the most recent expansion version, sold 2.8 million copies the day it was released in November 2008, and went on to sell 4 million copies in its first month.

The movie-deal was initially inked back in 2006 between Legendary Pictures, which has a co-production and financing arrangement with Warner Bros., and Blizzard Entertainment, which publishes the game.

"Warcraft" is "emblematic of the kind of branded, event films for which our studio is best known," said Warner Bros. Pictures Group president Jeff Robinov.

Raimi will oversee development of the project, and begin shooting once he wraps "Spider-Man 4," which goes into production next year.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...#ixzz0M07OdXI2

I wonder if Bruce Campbell will be in it.

[Asher]

Still can't see how this would work as a movie.

Is it going to be fully CGI? Wouldn't surprise me with Blizzard.

[Dinner]

It could be a total piece of ****, and it will be, but it will still make money as hordes of dateless pimply faced boys will still pay $10 to go see it. Making crap movies of popular games is an old Hollywood tradition.

[DinoDoc]

It could be a total piece of ****,

I doubt it will be a total piece of ****. After all, Uwe Boll isn't involved.

[Jon Miller]

I wonder how they kept Uwe Boll away from it

JM

[DinoDoc]

Good sense on Blizzard's part?

[DaShi]

Still can't see how this would work as a movie.

Is it going to be fully CGI? Wouldn't surprise me with Blizzard.

Yes. The movie will be the B-list celebrities from their commercials playing the game. Actually, that sounds more interesting than just writing a story in the WoW universe.

Also, wasn't there talk of a Guild Wars movie too?

Finally, wasn't Spiderman 3 bad enough to either kill the movie franchise or at least delay it several years for a reset?

[Sirotnikov]

Raimi's last movie was crap.

Slightly amusing crap, but crap nonetheless

[Dis]

yes even without Uwe Boll this movie will suck. Which makes me wonder.

Has there been even one good adaptation of a video/pc game? And Tomb Raider doesn't count.

[Dis]

Yes. The movie will be the B-list celebrities from their commercials playing the game. Actually, that sounds more interesting than just writing a story in the WoW universe.

Also, wasn't there talk of a Guild Wars movie too?

Finally, wasn't Spiderman 3 bad enough to either kill the movie franchise or at least delay it several years for a reset?

Mr. T and Ozzy

[Zevico]

I wonder how he's going to craft the script. I mean, does WoW have a story as such? Or is it just a bunch of instances with flavour attached?

[Dis]

There is a story for the two expansions. But they are separate from each other. The enemies have nothing to do with each other (that I know of).

Wrath of the Lich King has Arthas as a death knight. And Burning Crusade had Illidan leading hordes of demons.

The vanilla game I'm not sure of. I didn't play wow much back then. I have no idea who the main enemy was. There seemed to be several raid instances with several different types of enemies. The undead seemed to be the biggest threat, I'm not sure who lead them though. Naxx was the last instance released. I don't know the lore here, but I suspect they were responsible for the plague and the state of eastern plaguelands? You had another raid instance in Silithus, but those were insect things I believe (never actually been in the instance lol). And then Molten Core- not sure who the baddies were there- dark iron dwarves I guess.

So what I'd do is choose one of the expansions and go with that story. They'll probably choose Wrath of the Lich King as the story is much more fleshed out here. Blizz has gotten better with story telling during the course of the game. And the latest expansion shows it. The quests in dragonblight are much better, you'll notice more of the main story in those quests. I enjoyed questing in Northrend a whole lot. Unfortunately the game has other problems. One being the gameplay is the same as it always was, so after thousands of hours you get bored. The fanbase seems to be getting worse. People have no attention span, and want everything now, and want everything dumbed down. I miss having solo quests that used to be tough. Anyone know those ships that used to be off the southern part of STV? They nerfed that quest so its ridiculously easy. Used to be before you had to be careful to pull only one or two mobs. Now you don't have to worry about it.

[lightblue]

The main story line predates the world of warcraft timeline. Most lore happened in the early WC1-3 games (fall of arthas etc),

[Dis]

true. I never played Warcraft games so I missed alot of the early lore.

[Elok]

I seem to recall hearing somewhere that Uwe Boll really tried to get the rights to WoW, but Blizzard laughed him out of the building. Literally laughed at him. And I can't imagine what a turd Spider-Man 4 is going to be, considering how atrocious 3 was.