Kevin's Watch

August 4, 2007 - Blizzard has been going to Hollywood for years to pitch movies, but kept getting turned away with the notion that fantasy pictures just wouldn't work. Blizzard's Chief Operating Officer Paul Sams said as much during a panel today at BlizzCon 2007. That was, until they met up with Legendary Pictures, the studio that produced Batman Begins and 300. Chris Metzen, Blizzard's VP of Creative Development, and Thomas Tull, head of Legendary Pictures, were also on stage to provide additional insights.

As of now, the film is set for a 2009 release. The budget is upwards of 100 million USD, and it will be a live action film, likely with a mix of digital effects. To what extent such effect will be used depends largely on the director, who has yet to be named. Legendary and Blizzard are hoping to find someone of Zach Snyder caliber, the man who directed 300. No actors were named, something that will also have to wa it until a director is chosen.

Metzen went on to describe the story, though very vaguely. Originally Blizzard wanted it to be set in the universe of the first RTS Warcraft game with a basic Orcs versus Humans storyline. That was scrapped because of notions that it may be too similar to Lord of the Rings, and that Blizzard felt the Warcraft name has reached its current level of popularity with its MMO, World of Warcraft, as opposed to the RTS games from before, which include three Warcraft titles and various expansion packs. As it stands, the story will incorporate a series of major events from about one year before World of Warcraft, and will be principally told from the perspective of the Alliance.

The movie will be two to two and a half hours long, and both Legendary and Blizzard want it to have an epic action kind of feel. Tull pointed out the film would blend elements from other big action titles like Gladiator, 300, and Braveheart. According to Metzen, the movie won't be a journey type of tale, like in Lord of the Rings. Instead, it will focus more on growing tensions between the races of the World of Warcraft universe and eventually culminate with some kind of battle. Characters likely to make an appearance include Bolvar Fordragon, Thrall, and Cairne Bloodhoof. Arthas, a famous character from Warcraft 3, will more than likely not be in the film.

As far as MPAA ratings go, Legendary can't really say what the film will draw, as they still don't have a director, but Metzen was quick to point out, "it's warcraft, it's not pillow-fight craft." At the end of the Q&A session, they briefly showed a storyboard image from the movie, a view at dusk of the mammoth tree, Teldrassil, which will likely serve as a setting in the movie.

Loremaster wrote:Movie starts.
Cut to a low, rolling plain. Two humans enter scene and walk up to a wizard.
Human 1: Do you have a quest for us?
Wizard: I need you to go to the south west and collect 20 tusks from the Greater Plague Boars there.
Human 2: Sounds good. What do we get?
Wizard: Either Pants of the Eagle or Bow of Thrognar.

What follows is two and a half hours of farming.

jacob Raver, sinTempter wrote:Maybe they could make the film for say, $40 mil...then charge a regular $8 movie ticket price to download it...might be able to make a profit then...

Edit: Holy crap. On second thought, $40 mil...yeah right...

...wiki says that FF cost $137 mil. to make and ended up losing a total of $94 mil...damn!