April 18th, 2007, posted by FofR | Digg This
… and they asked him a little bit about the World of Warcraft movie. Itzik Ben Bassat is the Vice President of development and he says these few words:
There’s a World of Warcraft Movie in the works, do you expect that to enjoy similar success?
We’ve been working on that movie for years! If people only knew how many years we put in to closing this movie deal. We’re very happy with our progress though, it was really difficult for us as a company to find some we trusted to work with. With Legendary, well, they did Batman Returns and the new Superman so we knew that was a company we wanted to work with. Bringing Warcraft to the movies is the next step for us, we want to let people bring World of Warcraft into other aspects of their lives. After all, we’re competing for people’s entertainment time, whether it’s listening to music watching TV or going to the cinema. Our goal is to provide the best entertainment out there.Any news on when we can expect to see the film?
Hollywood has it’s own pace but we’re working as hard as we can to push it forwards.
Check Empire for the full text.
April 16th, 2007, posted by FofR | Digg This
An undisclosed source at a news site called “The Instance” claims to have insider information with regards to the Warcraft movie adaptation. At such an early stage any information like this is most certainly false and this has been classified as a rumor - which is giving this far too much credit. Im not even sure actors are involved in the process yet - firstly a director needs to be named.
If you see this information repeated anywhere, know that this was an April Fool’s joke/prank. People have been talking about these details as if they were facts and I am dispelling them now.
“I’m a personal assistant for a very well-known actor, and I’ve just handed him a complete script treatment for the new Warcraft movie. It’s going to be called “Warcraft: The Fall of Quel’Thalas”, and it looks like it may be the first of a proposed trilogy, with a second part called “The Caverns Of Time” and the final installment called “The Battle Of Mount Hyjal”.“
With the success of LotR though, everything seems destined for a trilogy these days.
April 16th, 2007, posted by FofR | Digg This
Come May 8th 2006 Blizzard Entertainment made an announcement that their Warcraft franchise/universe would be adapted into a silver screen feature length movie. Legendary Pictures, a relatively new production company behind Superman Returns and Batman Begins, are to develop the live action film with distribution likely falling to Warner Brothers as part of an existing agreement.
Paul Sams, chief operating officer for Blizzard had this to say, “We searched for a very long time to find the right studio for developing a movie based on one of our game universes. Many companies approached us in the past, but it wasn’t until we met with Legendary Pictures that we felt we’d found the perfect partner. They clearly share our high standards for creative development, and because they understand the vision that we’ve always strived for with our Warcraft games, we feel there isn’t a better studio out there for bringing the Warcraft story to film.”
Whilst Thomas Tul, CEO of legendary pictures stated, “One of our goals at Legendary Pictures has been to bring heroic stories to life in groundbreaking ways, and it’s inspiring to work with a company such as Blizzard that takes that approach with each of its products. The Warcraft universe is possessed of such a rich mythology and, as such, serves as an ideal platform as we go about translating that universe into what we intend to be a major event film.”
With regards to the adaptation, Legendary Pictures’ Jon Jashni said, “We are intending to approach this as we would the adaptation of a best-selling novel: respect the essence of all that it is but also build upon that fertile base while translating it into a new medium.”
The official announcement can be found here.
As of the moment IMDB has penned a 2008 release date which is of course subject to change.
