It’s a lament we repeat a lot around here, but we still don’t have a good video game movie. Actually, “good” is much too generous. How about a half-way decent or watchable video game movie?
Although this road is overloaded with land mines, we seem to be entering a new era where at least people are willing to try and get a big, epic video game movie made. Ubisoft is developing several of their titles in house to turn into films, including Splinter Cell with Tom Hardy attached to star, and now there’s significant movement on the World of Warcraft movie.
Originally Sam Raimi was rumored to direct the big screen version of WoW, and any video game movie directed by Raimi would be fascinating as far as I’m concerned, let alone Warcraft. That’s not to say the helming duties have been turned over to any hack. In fact, Duncan Jones will be directing.
If you’re not familiar with Jones, he’s the son of David Bowie, and he’s become quite a filmmaker. He made the acclaimed minimalist sci-fi film Moon, which reportedly cost only $1 million and starred Sam Rockwell, and he also broke through to the mainstream with Source Code.
As the Hollywood Reporter confirms, the film will be called Warcraft, and it’s being produced by Legendary Pictures, the company that also gave us the Dark Knight films, and the upcoming Godzilla reboot.
Theirs is a completed script for WOW, which is naturally “under wraps,” with a tentative Fall 2013 start date. Projected time of arrival? 2015, which is really shaping up to be a hell of a year for genre with the next Star Wars film and Avengers 2.
Will Warcraft finally be the big video game movie that will leave the decades of refuse like Super Mario Brothers behind? Stay tuned…
