World of Warcraft movie on hold

By Fred Dutton Published 7 October, 2010

Raimi to make Wizard of Oz flick instead.

Plans for a World of Warcraft movie are on ice after director Sam Raimi announced he has decided to start work on a new Wizard of Oz movie instead.

According to Deadline, the Spiderman/Evil Dead helmer has put his movie adaptation of Blizzard's hugely popular MMO on the backburner so that he can make Oz: The Great And Powerful instead, with Robert Downey Jr set to don the wizard's robe.

Raimi announced his intent to make a World of Warcraft movie last year, insisting "At its core, Warcraft is a fantastic, action-packed story. I am thrilled to work with such a dynamite production team to bring this project to the big screen."

Legendary Pictures, the studio set to make the film, hasn't announced whether the production will be resurrected at a later date or if a new director will be sought.

Not to worry - fans of the MMO can seek solace in the impending release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, due in December.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • CaptainQuint #1 2 years ago

    And I buried her... God help me... I buried her in the floor of the fruit cellar.

  • Gearskin #2 2 years ago

    Honey... you got real ugly.

  • mentalabhoration #3 2 years ago

    Practicing friend of Dorothy?

  • vijay_UK #4 2 years ago

    Sam should cast Amy Winehouse as the Wicked Witch of the East

  • Goodfella #5 2 years ago

    *sings*

    I'm a friend of Dorothy's, I'm a friend of Dorothy's, sheeeeeeee is my freind!

  • riceNpea #6 2 years ago

    a Warcraft films sounds exciting. 3 hours of some elf killing pigs in the woods.

  • ZeroAX #7 2 years ago

    WoW is way past its heyday in the West, this movie keeps getting pushed back, I'm pretty sure it will never see the light of day.

  • Wyrm #8 2 years ago

    How does this work then? If he's agreed to do the WoW movie, how can he say 'Oh, hang on, I'll be back in a year or so, just gonna go do this other movie instead'.

  • drhickman1983 #9 2 years ago

    Probably for the best. I do play WoW, and I enjoy it (the trick is to not play it too much). The story and lore is all pretty interesting, if rather silly and hackneyed given the ammount of retcons it has.

    I just can't see it being a good film.

  • warthog2k #10 2 years ago

    Oh ye of little faith. Clearly you underestimate the desire of the addicted masses to part with hard earned booty for anything with a WoW theme stapled to it!

    Just look at the books. They wouldn't have seen a printing press without the faint whiff of franchise.

    Doesn't have to be good, just correctly branded.

    Back to my Dorf anyway :)

  • Wyrm #11 2 years ago

    To be fair, some of the WoW lore is great, especially the Emerald Dream/Nightmare. But then Arthas, while awesome, is basically just Vader.

  • drhickman1983 #12 2 years ago

    Regarding the lore, yes it has some cool ideas, but the only way a film would work would be to have it start back at the beginning, the first war. I'd like the film to actually be good, not just fan service. If somebody tried to fit the entire Arthas/Lich King storyline into one film it'd be a mess. You need to establish the Alliance, the Horde, the back story of Ner'zhul. And to explain those to any detail you'd need go partly into Kiljaeden, the Orcs corruption, the're escape from it, and so on.

    So all I'd expect is the Orc invasion, the first war. As a Horde player I'd prefer the Horde to not be portrayed as simple savages, but for the sake of storytelling the best I'd hope for is showing that Orcs can be redeemed. Personally I'd like to the Tirion / Eitrigg story covered, as it shows that Orcs aren't evil bastards.

    But stick too much information in the film and it would be a badly paced mess.

  • TitusCrow #13 2 years ago

    Hmmm... I wonder if this shelving doesn't have something to do with the idea that doing an animated or FMV type film would be better.

  • Antaios #14 2 years ago

    @ZeroAX: Twelve million subscribers (in the news yesterday), is not "past its heyday."

    And on topic: meh. Another new/original movie pushed back for another remake of a remake of a story told to death really. Can someone just close off Hollywood? There's no intelligent life there (anymore), or at least not very creative life.

  • 5h1nj1 #15 2 years ago

    They always say how they're thrilled and excited and then they wander off somewhere, where more money is...

  • nuanimal #16 2 years ago

    Or to save time why not make both films together?

    The Wizard of Warcraft?

  • levitate #17 2 years ago

    It was all just pillow talk, babeh...

  • ZeroAX #18 2 years ago

    @Antaios

    12 million subs including china ain't much. Lineage had 30 million subs if you count Asia. But no one counted them when comparing Lineage to WoW (rightly so imo).

    WoW is probably still the biggest mmo in the West. But when I was playing it, it had over 10 million subs without launching in Chine. So since Europe+America < China's population, and the fact that China has different payment methods, I would think WoW's subscription base would have grown a LOT more since launching in china. Only it hasn't.

    500.000 extra subs in 2 years is a miserable number. WoW has reached its peak, and less people are playing it in the West.