Sam Raimi’s Warcraft Movie Didn’t Happen Because Blizzard Messed Up

Duncan Jones, the director of Moon and Source Code, is currently adapting World of Warcraft to the silver screen for Blizzard. The director was approached by the studio for his love of videogames and an appreciation for the franchise.

Not long ago, Legendary Pictures and Blizzard had plans to develop a World of Warcraft movie with Sam Raimi (Spider-Man, Evil Dead) at the helm. That movie never got made, and today Raimi blames Blizzard for the movie’s collapse. Raimi explained how things went down in an interview with Vulture today:

"Robert Rodat was working on the script, and it was taking a long time. I think they were getting a little antsy at Legendary, the production company. Actually, what happened was even more complicated, so let me go back a little bit. First, they asked me if I wanted to make it, and I said, 'Yes, I love World of Warcraft, and I think it would make a great picture.' So I read a screenplay they had that was written by the guys at Blizzard, and it didn't quite work for me.

"I told them I wanted to make my own original story with Robert, so we pitched it to Legendary and they accepted it, and then we pitched it to Blizzard, and they had reservations, but they accepted it. Then Robert wrote the screenplay, and only once he was done did we realize that Blizzard had veto power, and we didn't know that. And they had never quite approved the original story we pitched them. Those reservations were their way of saying, 'We don't approve this story, and we want to go a different way,' so after we had spent nine months working on this thing, we basically had to start over. And Robert did start over, but it was taking too long for the people at Blizzard, and their patience ran out. Honestly, I think it was mismanagement on their behalf, not to explain to us that the first story was vetoed long ago. Why did they let us keep working on it? Were they afraid to tell me?"

As for whether the new movie is going to have the same problems with Blizzard’s management this time around, that remains to be seen.