Warcraft Movie Lands Saving Private Ryan Writer

John Funk

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Dec 20, 2005
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Warcraft Movie Lands Saving Private Ryan Writer



Cult movie director Sam Raimi - helming the Warcraft film adaptation - has revealed that the movie is not "Rise of the Lich King," and that Saving Private Ryan writer Robert Rodat is on board.

In an interview with director Sam Raimi over his return-to horror- film announced to be directing [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/765-Drag-Me-To-Hell] back in July.

Raimi took time to ix-nay the suggestion that the film would carry the subtitle "Rise of the Lich King" as reported earlier this month [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95177-New-Release-Window-Subtitle-Emerge-For-Warcraft-Film], indicating that the IMDB entry was likely edited by an overzealous fan. Rather than focusing on the stories of pre-existing characters, Raimi said that the film would likely be an original story set in the world of Warcraft - to "adapt the game," rather than simply reiterating a preconceived tale.

"We want to be really faithful to the game," said Raimi. "We would have our writer, Robert Rodat, really craft an original story within that world that feels like a World of WarCraft adventure. Only obviously it's very different 'cause it's expanded and translated into the world of a motion picture."

Beyond that, Raimi spoke of the need to make a movie that catered to the massive Warcraft fanbase as well as all of those non-gamers who couldn't tell their Alliance from their Horde. The director was hoping to properly capture "the Horde and the Alliance and the mythology that takes place in the game, and the archetypes that the game presents." So, the goal is to be accurate and authentic, with pre-established characters like Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore as secondary players rather than the focus of the story. Makes sense to me.

Oh, and the Robert Rodat [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0734441/] mentioned above? He was the scriptwriter for the critically acclaimed World War II film Saving Private Ryan. Said script was nominated for an Oscar, which is probably a good sign for Warcraft's appearance on the silver screen.

Says Raimi of Rodat [http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/10/12/exclusive-warcraft-movie-taps-saving-private-ryan-screenwriter/]: "I've never made a video game movie, but my approach would be to work with the best character writer I can find, which in this case is Robert Rodat, and tell a great character story within the fantastic environment of the world of Warcraft, while staying true to their mythology."

True, he has some credentials under his belt that aren't quite as good (The Patriot and Fly Away Home weren't bad, but 10,000 BC did get panned pretty hard) but let's look at this from a relative point of view: It's better than getting the Legend of Chun-Li writer [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/90773-Shadow-of-the-Colossus-Hits-The-Big-Screen], right?

Who knows? This has the potential to turn out fairly awesome, especially if Superman [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/93410-Blizzard-Ponders-Bruce-Campbells-Role-in-Warcraft-Film] are involved.

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ZeroMachine

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Ah, good, I'm glad it isn't about the Lich King. I thought it would be weird if they pulled a 180 like that...

Also, him working with the writers of the games? Freakin' epic.
 

cleverlymadeup

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well i've got some hope it will be good, then again it's Sam Raimi directing so it will be a good movie no matter what
 

maddawg IAJI

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Huh? Prehaps they'll include a ten minute scene of Alliance getting killed on the beaches. [/sarcasm]

This may actually be intresting. Of course I was gonna go see it either way, but now I got a little hope that it may actually good.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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This could be the best chance we've had yet to see an actually-decent game-to-movie adaptation. Let's just hope the guards remember their "shoot Uwe Boll on sight" orders.

Furburt said:
The Evil Dead movies were the most fun movie series I've watched since Brain Dead. (hazard a guess to what kind of movies I like.)
Rom-coms!

...no, wait, that doesn't make any sense. Musicals!

...damn, I'm bad at this.
 

stonethered

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This movie is actually starting to sound like it might be an A-grade movie. Blizzard must be serious about this.
 

Milkman Dan

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Faithful to the game? Perhaps it'll start with a 15 minute montage of power-leveling, followed by an hour or so of raiding. The movie will end with a man raging at his computer when he learns that the next WoW update raised the leveling cap, making all of his work pointless.
 

Robert632

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no person, unless they are a mix of god, allah, jesus, and mohammad could make a WoW movie good. a man could make it hilariously bad, however.
 

Styphax

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I'm sad it won't be based on Warcraft 3. Though I'm interested to see how he'll adapt the potential for story that's available in WoW. This should be fun.
 

SonofSeth

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MR T3D said:
working title: Saving Leroy Jenkins
If anything it would be Saving Private Jenkins.

When you look at all the previous game to movie incidents you'll notice that almost all of them had second or third grade talent attached to it. Crappy director and/or actors, crappy budget and a crappy story that tried to retell the story from game it was adapting.

Everything I read so far about this movie shows that people involved here watched all those shitty movies and know how bad it can get if you don't approach the material with respect.

What we have here are:
Spiderman/Evil Dead Director
Dark Knight Producer
Saving Private Ryan/Patriot script writer
Story not focused on retelling the events from games but focusing on the universe and mithology to tell a new story in a way that is similar to how Blizzard cinematics are focused on characters, story and larger than life events you can never accomplish in games themselves.


It all sounds so good, even too good to be true, but I remain hopeful Blizzard can use the special sauce and do what no other have done before, make a great videogame movie.