Warner Bros. long talked about movie adaptation of the popular Blizzard game franchise Warcraft just got serious. They’ve hired Sam Raimi to direct it.
Wait a minute, you ask, isn’t he directing Spider-Man 4? Yep, but Raimi thinks he can do two things at once. Variety says he’ll start supervising the pre-production and development of Warcraft: The Movie while at the same time finishing up Spider-Man 4. The fourth Spidey film starts shooting next year, with Warcraft to follow.
If you have a life outside the world of computers, you’re cooler than me. You’re also probably wondering what Warcraft is. In its most popular incarnation the franchise is the web’s premiere, massively multiplayer, online role playing game set in a fantasy atmosphere in which players can be half-naked elves and dwarfs and magical things. There’s also a more story-driven version of the Warcraft universe in the form of a series of real time strategy games, presumably they’d draw at last some of their script material from there since the massively multiplayer version's story is, at least partially, supposed to be user created. Regardless of where they get the movie’s story from, the game’s legions of ridiculously addicted fans should guarantee plenty of ticket buyers for Raimi’s movie, on opening day.
