• The Journey to Warcraft - Ten Years in the Making


    Back in May 2006, Blizzard announced that a Warcraft movie will be made as a collaboration between Blizzard and Legendary Pictures. With details slated to be released “in the months ahead”.


    Come Blizzcon 2007, scarce details on the movie were discussed. Drafting of the script was still in progress, the release date was planned for 2009, a director had not been chosen and the movie would be told primarily from the perspective of the Alliance.

    In mid 2009, it was announced that Sam Raimi would be directing the movie, coming from the Spiderman films from the 2000s, and with it, a revised release date for 2011. The direction for the film was for it to feel like a “World of Warcraft adventure”, but with an original story within the Warcraft universe.

    Come Comic-Con 2010, Chris Metzen confirmed that the film was still going through the “treatment stage”. Doubt began to grow surrounding the future of the movie, especially considering his wording.

    With both the 2009 and 2011 release date having passed, multiple script revisions still underway, the future of the Warcraft movie wasn’t looking overly promising.

    In May 2012, Nethaera from Blizzard posted on the official forums in response to a discussion about the movie being scrapped, stating that it’s “still on the radar”.


    It wasn’t until later that year during Comic-Con 2012 that Sam Raimi himself stated that he would not be directing the movie, as he had moved onto another project.

    There was no further news on the movie until January 2013, when Legendary Pictures confirmed that they were still working on the movie, and they had a new director - Duncan Jones, an avid World of Warcraft player himself, with past experiencing directing Moon and Source Code - both award winning films.

    With Charlels Leavitt (The Express and Blood Diamond) writing the script and a new release date of 2015, hope for the future of the film was renewed.

    The filming for Warcraft finally went under way almost eight years after its initial announcement in early January 2014, with the filming wrapping up during May the same year.


    Though there had been numerous announcements about the cast thoughout mid to late 2013, it wasn’t until Blizzcon 2014 that the announcements were officially made by Blizzard and Legendary.

    The movie will be based around the time of Warcraft I: Orcs and Humans, following both factions close to 50-50. Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), working on the special effects for many of the Marvel Universe films, Harry Potter films, Transformers, are providing the visual effects for the film, with Blizzard promising the effects to be like "Lord of the Rings and Avatar at the same time."

    Interestingly enough there are multiple people working on the film who have had first hand experience with the Warcraft universe. Aside from the director, the actor for Orgrim - Robert Kazinsky, plays a Death Knight in a Top 100 Guild and the Lead Visual Effects Supervisor - Bill Westenhofer, played a mage on Kil'Jaeden.

    Alongside this announcement, there was a closed viewing of footage from the film which was not shown to anyone who wasn't attending Blizzcon.

    Fast forward to this week during Comic-Con 2015, there were further previews of the film shown to attendees, which again would not be released to the public. That didn’t stop Alphanerd from filming and sharing the footage with the world.

    Along with this, Legendary released a 360° video of yourself flying on a Gryphon on YouTube.



    With filming finished, post production in progress and footage being shown to the public, it's safe to assume that after ten years, the Warcraft movie will finally become a reality.
    This article was originally published in forum thread: The Journey to Warcraft - Ten Years in the Making started by 4096 View original post