World of Warcraft Set to Hit Big Screen0

Written by Nishanthini Ganesan 

World of Warcraft fans might be inter­ested to note that their favorite fan­tasy game is being adapted into a film. 

Legendary Pictures has announced that Duncan Jones, who also directed Moon (2009) and the well-received Source Code (2011), will have the dif­fi­cult task of turn­ing the iconic online mul­ti­player game into a movie that will both please fans, as well as inter­est cinema-goers. The mak­ers of World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment has been plan­ning a film adap­ta­tion of the hugely-popular game for years.

With around 10 mil­lion play­ers cur­rently sub­scribed to World of Warcraft, the movie already has an audi­ence. However, there is no say­ing how this movie will fare in the eyes of crit­ics. It has been a long-standing strug­gle for movies based on video games to gar­ner box-office suc­cess, as well as crit­i­cal acclaim. 

Along with the news also came the con­fir­ma­tion that Blood Diamond writer Charles Leavitt will be pen­ning the script and that Jones’ long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor, Stuart Fenegan, will take on the role of exec­u­tive pro­ducer for this film. Fenegan will be joined by pro­duc­ers from Atlas Entertainment, Legendary Pictures and Blizzard Entertainment. With a reported bud­get of US$100 Million, this will be Jones’ first big-budget production.

Jones’s first film, Moon, earned him a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer.

The acclaimed science-fiction direc­tor turned to his Twitter page in response to the news, tweet­ing “So the gaunt­let was thrown down ages ago: Can you make a proper MOVIE of a video game. Ive always said its pos­si­ble. Got to DO it now! .”

Production for the film is set to begin in Fall 2013 and it is expected to be released in Summer 2015.

- The Guardian | Entertainment Weekly | International Business Times | IGN