Gary Whitta (screenwriter [Futurama episodes, Book of Eli, Live action Akira], author and game designer) has revealed that over the past two years he has been fervently working, in secret, on the World of Warcraft movie adaptation. However, since Raimi has come on board, the film’s direction has changed and Whitta is no longer involved. Whitta explains,
I had actually been working on this for the past two years. Had to keep it under wraps at the time but it doesn’t really matter now.
I worked very closely with Legendary and Blizzard to come up with a screenplay that distilled the sprawling Warcraft mythology into a narrative that was easily accessible to the non-player, and everyone was really pleased with the results — I personally thought my last draft of the script in particular was really kick-ass and did a good job of introducing the Warcraft world to non-players while also satisfying hardcore players who knew every nook and cranny of the universe. When Sam expressed interest in the property, however, he had his own pretty specific vision of what he wanted to do story-wise so that’s the version they’re now pursuing. I’m no longer involved but I wish them all the best with it; so far as I’m concerned Raimi is the best possible director for this.
Thanks Márton Gazdig.
Comments 11 Responses to “Gary Whitta worked on Warcraft movie script”
This is depressing for me. It seems that Blizzard has settled for the lesser of two butchers in laughing away Uwe Boll and then giving the job to Sam Raimi.
Anybody who believes that Raimi has any right to write/make this movie: go read the first few Sword of Truth novels (whether you liked them or not) and then watch a few episodes of Legend of the Seeker. Then commence cutting your wrists.
Horrible decision Blizzard, especially when it was made by ousting someone who was likely to be a lot more “true” to Warcraft and who had apparently poured two years into this project. For shame.
i hope the movie is about rise of the lich king, because my friends and i think many,many people would want to see it.
I would rather see the entire movie done like the cinematic movies in the game. Just have well known actors for the voices similar to beowulf movie.
What have you been smoking T?
Have you not seen how he did the evil dead movies? Great series imo, and frankly I think he will do a great job for this movie.
Milo, “Evil Dead” was a “funny” horror, just like “Drag me to hell” (which was just mediocre). I don’t want that to happen to Warcraft.
Let’s better stick to the fact that he directed Spider-man.
I know nothing about the new screenwriter but I hope it won’t be like with “Watchmen” where Alex Tse screwed up perfectly fine script by adding the usual Hollywood action movie crap to it. Luckily Watchmen turned out OK (but only because Snyder as a big fan of the graphic novel rewrote some parts of the script).
Lets hope for the best. We still have like 2 years
So, whitta’s script is not gonna be used at all? Personally I’d like to read it and find out how close he was going to be with getting it right. But cmon, how good could they possibly make this movie, eh? I think as fans we should not get too overly excited, yea sam hit the mark with spiderman, but I think he’s out of his league with warcraft, and its not that I think someone can do a better job directing it, I just think its too big of a project period, mark my words, if we see a great film adaptaion of warcraft, its gonna be a few years, and if we get it by 2011, most likely not gonna be that good.
i am more of a fan of Peter Jackson and would have loved to see what he could have done with World of Warcraft.… but.… he is not and we will see. i was an Eragon fan of the books but the movie was far short… there are many movies that “try” to tell the story of a book and fail… again, we shall see…
oh yeah… apparently this movie won’t be out until maybe 2012 and how many more expansions will there be? Lich King won’t be much by then i am thinking… maybe they should consider a trilogy?
I cant wait till the New Expanshoin it will be ausome i like Tha goblins
I wanna see illidan and black temple!
Personally I thought SpiderMan sucked. The actors appealed to 3rd graders. BatMan on the other hand was more like what I would want in a WoW movie. We have been saying for several years Blizzard should make this a movie. With Avatar which to me, sucked! but was technically exactly what blizzard should be doing with WoW was a great start into this direction. I stopped playing wow but can’t stop dreaming of herbing so I know i’m still a recovering addict. Blizzard should have used the 2yo script and had the director freaking direct it. I can tell you unless they reinvent wow, it wont appeal to many but old time wow fans. I hope they rebuild and repackage wow because Starcraft is a miss, and the WoW expansions have run 90% of my friends off the game, to OMG LOTR. or others. Sheesh
Well.. I like spiderman, and it’s history, and the movie, sucked! so far! the history was raped,the characters.. where unrecognizable if you knew them from the comics(i just like the soundtrack, which is great =D), if I see that happening to the WOW history in the movie then i will fall in depression xD badly . I play wow, and i love its history too, but i don’t want a movie full of action and cliché scenes like avatar (i like it, but WOW.. is a huge thing) If you say that Gary Whitta was actually writing an script and he’s no longer going to work on it then I’m truly starting to doubt about blizzard and its choices, like in the game, now with the new Expansions everything is just about playing for several hours at day, repeating the same s****… what tells me that about blizzards goals :C?