(Crowd cheers)
Fan 12: When is the soonest we can see a preview?
Metzen: That would be very soon.
(Note: Duncan and Pardo whisper each other)
Duncan: You know, I would say next year.
Pardo: Probably some time next year. It is one of those things like — I mean we haven’t even started filming yet. So that schedule is just not put together yet. I think a lot of times it is about a year out from the release they start doing previews and things like that?
Duncan: I would say that I think next year’s BlizzCon panel is going to have a hell of a lot of interesting things to show.
Pardo: There you go. So make sure you come to BlizzCon next year.
Fan 13: I was wondering why you decided to make a movie instead of possibly a TV Series — and you have such a big story that is beautiful that you could put into a TV Series.
Duncan: I guess I would answer that these guys have an aweful lot on their plate as far as delivering games…
Metzen: I would say — unofficially — it is nothing official at all. I’m just riffing here — like “I want one of those too.”
Pardo: I think the other thing, too, if you look at when we kind of went down the road, I think it think it was in 2006 when we decided to do a movie, that was way before Game of Thrones
Metzen: Which means “We have been doing this for so long. The industry of Television has transformed itself.”
Pardo: If Duncan does the job I know he is going to do, then maybe more studios will be knocking our doors to do TV shows.
Duncan: It goes back to that point where the number of stories that you guys have available to work with. We get this right, and we are going to do everything to make sure it turns out well that you can go anywhere with this. You can start going anywhere.
Fan 14: This is not my main question, but I am very interested in the previous gentleman’s question about auditioning. My agent would like to know. (Joke) I was wondering when can we pre-order tickets to the movie through the Battle.net Account and what epic pet will we get?
Carpenter: Great idea.
Pardo: We haven’t even gotten to the place to start thinking about ideas like that. I think I have to make sure that we write that one down and think about that once we get closer.
Duncan: You should be working on our marketing department.
Fan 15: Earlier I heard Warcraft referred to as a franchise, and it is, but I think at this point it is holy ground. It is an institution, and it is as much ours as it is yours. And the question I need to hear answered to know that this is in good hands is — Are you taking this movie as seriously as they took LORD OF THE RINGS?
Duncan: I can’t speak for Peter Jackson. All I can say is those movies were ground-breaking and took me into a world in a way that I haven’t seen ever. It just completely enveloped you in this whole culture and wealth. Those were the movies that inspired me to want to be able to do something like this. My first two films were science fiction, and I think there has been an absolute explosion in what kind of science fiction films are getting made right now. I think myself and Nicky Bentham from when we did the film MOON in 2009 — science fiction has kinda been not really seen as that opportune a place to actually branch out into different kinds of stories; and actually right now fantasy films have Lord of the Rings franchise and that’s what people see and think of fantasy films; and what I really want is to have the opportunity to explode fantasy in the same way that science fiction is now exploding; and I think Peter Jackson has really set the bar as to what fantasy needs to be and anything we do has to match or beat that.
(Cheers)
Fan 16: I’m sure a few people in the audience has some opinions on this, but: Stereo conversion versus Native. What’s your opinion?
Duncan: I have one eye much better than the other. So 3D films are not something that immediately works right for me. I actually prefer to watch the 2D experience; but 3D is obviously a massively important draw for some people who really get a lot out of it. I don’t know if you have seen GRAVITY
Pardo: Ok, we are almost out of time so we only got time for maybe two more questions.
Fan 17: I am a linguistics major. You guys mentioned Avatar, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones and they all have something in common. That all of them have fleshed out languages. That sort of adds more depth to the world. Do you need someone to flesh out orcish? And if so, when do I start working?
(Panelists laugh)
Duncan: We do have someone that’s fleshing out orcish, I’m afraid. Sorry. The job was taken and he is someone who has work on some of those things that you mentioned. We are in good hands, but there would be more to that language at the end of developing this movie that maybe already existed in the game side of things; and hopefully that would cross-culture back to you guys as well if you want to use it.
(Metzen talks in orcish — osh’korse [which sounded like of course] ma’kra)
(developers laugh)
Duncan: Zug zug, indeed.
Pardo: Alright, last question.
Fan 18: I was just wondering if you will make this film PG-13 to appeal to a much broader audience or is it going to be rated R to allow for more stuff to be put into it in some way?
Duncan: I think we will going to be probably PG-13, but when you actually look at the films that have come out lately at PG-13, and what you can do in that, there is a constantly shifting and sliding line as to what is possible. You know, Batman movies were PG-13, and if you remember the Joker scene with the pencil … that’s PG-13. So you can get away with some [shit] in PG-13.
Pardo: Alright, I want to thank you all guys for coming to the panel, and especially thank you so much that Duncan and Bill have come to share all the information about the movie and all please give us a hand for making all these reveals possible. Wait until next BlizzCon where we’ll actually show more.
(Crowd applauds)
Watch the entire Warcraft Movie Presentation Panel at BlizzCon.com – videos-on-demand (VOD) of all recorded panels will be available for two weeks. Buy the BlizzCon 2013 Virtual Ticket now.
Blizzplanet gathered all BlizzCon 2013 coverage and more panel transcripts will be added over the next few weeks. Check it out.
