A Warcraft movie had been in talks for many years now. Blizzard had been searching for a competent director and studio to bring Azeroth alive, and among the directors trying to nab the prestigious title was Uwe Boll, a – I’ll be blunt and unprofessional about it – sorry excuse of a director who has been the center of filmmaker mockery for a long time now. You may consider the reasoning harsh, but Uwe Boll is responsible for butchering several game-to-move adaptations, such as Dungeon Siege. In any case, Blizzard’s Warcraft movie finally found a home with Legendary Pictures and the Source Code director Duncan Jones.
It seems that filming for Warcraft is almost done. In fact, in just 3 weeks, filming will be wrapped up entirely, and that part of the production will come to an end. Does this mean we’ll be seeing Warcraft on the big screen soon? Not really, no. The movie was initially set for a December 18th, 2015 release date, but that date coincided with the release of Star Wars: Episode VII, so the release date of Warcraft was pushed back to early 2016. A wise move, certainly, as neither Disney nor Legendary Pictures had anything to gain from the massive competition of the two titles.
For those counting down with me, we're done shooting Warcraft in 3 weeks as of tomorrow! Holy shnikey…
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) May 1, 2014
Duncan Jones revealed the status of filming via Twitter, expressing himself rather…emotionally. There’s a huge distance between May 2014 and early 2016 though, so if filming is done, why is it taking so long for Warcraft to be released? Well, there’s a lot of CGI work to be done, and of course there’s the heavy marketing campaign that also follows. The Warcraft film doesn’t cover events from the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft, but rather returns to the roots of the Warcraft universe, telling an origin story of Orcs vs Humans, reminiscent of the very first Warcraft strategy games. The main characters featured are Durotan and Lothar, and will follow the two as they ultimately engage in epic and most likely destructive battle.
We don’t know much else about the Warcraft movie at this point, but trailers will most likely emerge next year. Until then, we can rejoice knowing that it’s eventually coming, it’s almost done, and Uwe Boll has nothing to do with it!