Spider-Man captain Sam Raimi exits upcoming film based on Blizzard's popular MMORPG; no replacement revealed.
The World of Warcraft movie has suffered a setback. CraveOnline caught up with Spider-Man director Sam Raimi at Comic-Con last week, where the filmmaker confirmed that he was no longer attached to the forthcoming film based on Blizzard's massively multiplayer online role-playing game due to his work on Oz: The Great and Powerful.
"Actually, they don't have me directing World of Warcraft anymore, because when I took the Oz job they had to move on to another director," Raimi said. "They had to start making it."
No mention was made concerning a replacement for Raimi as the World of Warcraft film director. As of press time, Blizzard has not responded to GameSpot's request for comment.
The World of Warcraft movie was announced in 2006. At the time, Blizzard stated that its intent was to make "one of the best films in the world." In 2009, Raimi officially came aboard to direct, and later that year, Saving Private Ryan scribe Robert Rodat was announced as the film's writer. In 2010, Raimi offered more details on the film, saying he had a 40-page document that "needs a lot of work."
"We're finding the characters and through the characters we're finding the story…we're trying to create realistic characters that can live in the world of Warcraft, as though you were in the game itself," he said at the time.
Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful hits theaters in 2013 starring Mila Kunis (Black Swan, Family Guy), James Franco (Spider-Man, 127 Hours), and Michelle Williams (Dawson's Creek, Shutter Island). It is a prequel to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and tells how the great wizard arrived in Oz and became its ruler.
World of Warcraft remains the most popular MMORPG on the market. It has 10.2 million paying subscribers, and a new expansion--Mists of Pandaria--is in development.
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
i really hate ppl whom consulting hate speech about wow. and i also hate ppl who callng others as "nerd". Let me explain sth; If you dont like the game do us a favour Please Quit Playing Wow as Fast as you can. This is a GAME, game's are fundementally built on the philosophy of "entertaining ppl". So; i'm not claiming that "everyone must like this game !" i'm just saying ; if you dont like the game, stop playing it, and stop making hate speech about it. its too easy right ?
Typical of Blizzard to announce something in 2006, and progress is still unknown. Really pathetic.
After Spiderman 3, I think this movie would have been the nail in his coffin. I love Sam Raimi, I love the Evil Dead series, first two spidermans were great, third sucked. I can't imagine a WoW movie being his big comeback.
The bigger surprise would be if anything was happening on the film. Raimi is *usually* a good director but he was always a bad fit with this project.
Wasn't one of the reasons there wasn't a Spider-Man 4 because Raimi was doing WOW? So basically the Amazing Spider-Man was made for nothing lol.
@toddx77 Raimi and Sony disagreed on where to take the story. He gets to make the Oz movie and produce his new Evil Dead movie, so I don't think he sees it as a bad trade-off.
@toddx77 And Toby (spiderman) didn't want to do any more, something about his back being bad.
this game is WAY too demonic... and they are making a movie out of it??? not a good sign...
2 Like A World of Warcraft film? HA! I would actually go to see that just to be surrounded by over the top nerds.
It'd be like an episode of The Big Bang Theory. Quality.
5 Like @warhawk-geeby This is the part where you try to convince everyone, mostly yourself, that you're not an over the top nerd as well.
@J_Dangerously Ooo good call. Unfortunately I'm nowhere near intelligent/socially inept enough to be classed as a nerd. I can live in hope though!
Who cares really. The chances of this being any good were probably very slim to begin with. Damn Hollywood and their running out of ideas again. I know that Sam Raimi has made other movies besides the Spiderman ones, I just don't know which. With that, I really didn't care for the Sman movies, then again, I don't really like any of the Superhero movies.
@10V3n0M01 Is the movie about the Holocaust or the horrible side of humanity? If not, I don't think he will start doing video game films again.
Wow, I didn't know that a movie of WoW was still even being talked about. I heard about it years ago, and then nothing.
We need this just as much as the poor looking Halo movie/series. On a side note, why is Raimi directing a prequel to a movie/book that already has a proper prequel (Wicked)?
@blueboxdoctor Which Wicked are we talking about here? The play or the book? Both are very different.
Anyway, none of those prequels are 'offiicial' or anything (and there is no Oz 'canon' beyond Baum's books anyway) so anyone is free to make their own interpretations.
@airmikee99 True, but I can't help but thinking it's just a cheap way to cash in on a classic, but hopefully it'll be good.
@blueboxdoctor I saw a preview for it last night before watching the new Batman (awesome), and this new Oz movie looks like it could be really good.
@LordRaymond True, I didn't know it was a Disney movie, but that explains why it looks similar to the recent Alice in Wonderland movie.
I remember hearing about the WoW movie many years ago. Frankly, I didn't know it was still a good-to-go.
@alecrast82 A majority of our species still believes in an imaginary sky fairy. Popularity doesn't equate to truth.
@airmikee99 "A majority of our species still believes in an imaginary sky fairy." // I see, and where are your valid arguments for that? Or are you just complaining for the sake of complaining?
7 Like I do not get it, Blizzard has hands down some of the BEST CGI in the world, each cutscene in their games is remarkable and well above most CGI films in terms of details and scope.
Why not use what they already know and make a great big epic CGI based WoW movie where they can do whatever they can think of?
@Stiler Because that would be extremely expensive. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within cost around 130 million dollars to make, and they didn't make nearly enough back to justify the costs - hell, it almost destroyed Squaresoft at the time because they lost so much money.
@Stiler Agreed with you on that bro. They should just have a person play a human while the rest r cgi. But, oh well, you know blizz.
maybe he just realized there is "Activision" word came before Blizzard then he quit.. (jk)
Yep. Lost all faith in Blizzard with their Diablo3 fiasco. The name "Blizzard" used to be synonymous with "great" and "quality". Now, "greed" is all that comes to mind when I hear blizzard.
1 Like *Sam Raimi leaves as the director
Uwe Boll: Hey guys! :D I th-
Everyone: NOOOO!!! Get out! Out! OUT!
Uwe Boll *sad face. Leaves
"So how about a CGI movie? You know, like those amazing commercials that you see on TV? The one's that look like it might be passable as a movie, you know?"
"Uhhh, HELL YEAH!"
dude i dont know whats wrong with hollywood they keep ruining games for the sake of money
the problem is none has ever made it
2 Like Great. Now get rid of the whole damn project. Very little good comes out of video game movies.
i think this wow movie is going to end up just like the supposed halo movie, in the dumpster. im pretty sure the only reason a movie was announced was just so it would boost game sales.
Charles Leavitt writing latest script for upcoming film adaptation of Blizzard's MMORPG; Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says the film is "important."
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