World of WarCraft Goes to the Big Screen

In January 2007, Blizzard Entertainment proudly announced that their highly successful MMORPG, World of Warcraft, surpassed 8 million subscribers. Come July 2007, Blizzard's online sensation hit 9 million subscribers worldwide, with the latest expansion pack, The Burning Crusade, still awaiting launch in China.

Determined to build upon its tremendously popular franchise even further, Blizzard announced a new add-on, entitled Wrath of the Lich King. Just to serve as a reminder, The Burning Crusade launched in mid-January in the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, selling over 3.5 million copies during the first month. It was also noted that 2.4 million copies sold worldwide within the first 24 hours.

Blizzard has been working hard to come up with a concept for a movie based on this fantasy setting that kept inspiring people for many, many years. Now that concept is finally coming together.

Okay, I'm sure plenty of people who are familiar with the brilliant work done by Blizzard's animation team, are bound to be a bit disheartened with the fact that they won't be making an animated (CG) movie. Instead, this movie is live action. The good news is that most of the cinematic sequences seen in games like Warcraft 3 or World of Warcraft have provided a major building block for some of the designs and conceptual work that's presently being considered for the movie. The decision on whether the people who were behind these cinematic sequences will be directly involved in the movie project still hasn't been made. Right now, they're focusing on the story itself.

During the company's recently held BlizzCon event, the renowned publisher and development studio delighted all attendees with a more detailed announcement of a movie based on the fantasy setting of the World of Warcraft. Diehard fans line-up with questions about the project, trying to milk-out as much concrete information from Blizzard as possible.

Prior to this year's BlizzCon we knew very little about the movie, aside from the fact that Blizzard Entertainment teamed-up with Legendary Pictures to work on a potential movie project that's set in the World of Warcraft universe.

As it stands, Legendary Pictures achieved worldwide recognition with recent blockbusters such as Batman Begins, Superman Returns, 300 and other flicks. But, most of you probably know that already. The inevitable question here is: why did Blizzard Entertainment choose to collaborate with this particular studio? Well, Blizzard COO Paul Sams and chief creative officer Chris Metzen both answered that question for us - we'll get back to that. First off, Blizzard stated they are extremely happy about their decision to cooperate with the aforementioned film studio. As for more tangible information on the matter, Legendary Pictures' chief creative officer Jon Jashni confirmed that a World of Warcraft movie script is under way and that both Blizzard and Legendary "hope to have a trailer" and actual movie material by next year. Jon also mentioned that 2009 was the targeted year for the launching of the movie. At this time, he didn't reveal a more precise release date, given the sheer complexity of the project. They uncovered that the movie budget is going to be in the neighborhood of $100 mill., which should give you some idea about how serious they are about the whole thing.

As for Blizzard's motivation behind the partnership with Legendary, it's now more than obvious why it came to pass. Legendary expressed quite clearly on where they stand when it comes to epic fantasy themed tales. "The Holy Grail to me is Lord of the Rings and what Tolkien did," explains Jon Jashni. It's more than obvious that most of what we've seen in Warcraft games was inspired by or derived from the fantasy world created by Tolkien. It's nice to see that both companies draw inspiration from the right sources.

The story takes place "about a year before WoW begins," so there's no denying you'll all be diving into a familiar world with familiar races, characters and so on. Regarding the storyline specifically, we've already learned it will be told mainly through the Alliance perspective and not from the standpoint of the Horde; which sort of disappointed several hardcore Blizzard fans attending the Blizzon Movie Panel Discussion. Immediately, names like Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore were mentioned and it was said that they might both appear in the movie, albeit those were just given as examples of the types of characters we can expect to witness in the completed version of the film.

It was specified that most of the movie script is still being written from the ground-up so to speak. On the other hand, Blizzard's Chris Metzen said they are working hand-in-hand with Legendary to create a narrative by amalgamating specific plot points from various Warcraft games and joining them into a unique new story. The initial idea was to use the outline of earlier Warcraft games (like WC: Orcs & Humans, WC II: Tides of Darkness, etc.) and translate that into a movie, but the idea was dropped since the tale focuses on conflicts between humans and orcs - and we've already seen that in the recent Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.