WARCRAFT

WARCRAFT

Directed by Duncan Jones

Starring Ben Foster, Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Rob Kazinsky, Daniel Wu, Clancy Brown, Ben Schnetzer, Ruth Negga, Burkely Duffield, Daniel Cudmore, Callum Keith Rennie,

Produced by Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Charles Roven, Alex Gartner

Production company : Legendary Pictures, Blizzard Entertainment, Atlas EntertainmentScreenplay by Charles Leavitt, Duncan Jones

Story by Chris Metzen

Based on Warcraft by Blizzard EntertainmentMusic by Ramin Djawadi

Cinematography :Simon Duggan

Edited by : Paul Hirsch

Distributed by : Universal Pictures

Release dates March 11, 2016

Budget $100 million

Duncan Jones reveals more details on the videogame adaptation already drawing comparisons to The Lord Of The Rings and Avatar.

Duncan Jones took to the stage at BlizzCon last month to update fans on the progress of his adaptation of massive online role playing game World Of Warcraft.

The Moon helmer revealed that a rough edit of the film now exists, which game studio Blizzard’s top brass have seen and appear to be delighted with. The majority of remaining work is on the special effects shots - handled by ILM – needed to bring the world of Azeroth to life. “It’s Avatar and Lord Of The Rings at the same time,” says Jones. “It’s a big, big movie.”

During the panel further details about the cast and setting were also revealed. The movie takes place in the Warcraft 1 era familiar to gamers, focusing on the battle between the two key factions of Azeroth (Warcraft’s Middleearth).

On one side is the honourable Alliance, founded by humans; on the other, the brutal Horde, mostly made up of Orcs. Jones ultimately got the gig because he wanted to tell the both sides of the story with real empathy.

Blizzard also revealed a number of the actors playing key roles for both factions (see sidebar, right). On stage, though, it was the arrival of Rob Kazinsky, wielding a giant Doomhammer prop, who stole the show. The Pacific Rim actor has been playing WoW since Burning Crusade, and has logged over 500 days in the game - a revelation which saw him jokingly accused of “slapping his nerd dick on the table” by the panel’s host. Speaking about the quality of the special effects work, Kazinsky said: “You know the cutscenes that Blizzard do for, like, Draenor or the ‘Arthas, My Son’ one? It’s like that, on crack.”

Jones screened the trailer at the event, which evoked a less booby, more overtly magical, Game Of Thrones. There was also a bonus lingering close-up of orc leader Durotan watching over his pregnant wife, complete with some fairly subtle emoting. Yep, subtle emoting in a videogame movie. This really could be a game-changer. TC

Release dates March 11, 2016