Movie Chronicles » World of Warcraft Movie

Gary Whitta worked on Warcraft movie script August 10th, 2009

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”

T August 21st, 2009

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.


helen August 23rd, 2009

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.


ran­domshaman August 29th, 2009

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.


Milo September 1st, 2009

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.


Mar­tin September 3rd, 2009

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 ;)


Dru­cola September 19th, 2009

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.


Rrasy­ro­ge­nees September 20th, 2009

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?


ForThe­Horde September 27th, 2009

I cant wait till the New Expan­shoin it will be ausome i like Tha goblins


alex January 1st, 2010

I wanna see ill­i­dan and black temple!


Lar­vatar August 20th, 2010

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


Vin September 22nd, 2010

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?