Blizzard Vice-president of Business Operations, Paul Sams, was interviewed by Gamespot to talk in-depth about the upcoming World of Warcraft Hollywood-film developed by Legendary Pictures. Blizzard wishes to produce an epic film with characteristics similar to Braveheart and Lord of the Rings. Blizzard will have a lot of flexibility in the development of the film, including decisions about which screenwriter will write the story, the actors, approvals of different aspects of the film and more. They want to guarantee this film won’t fall into the nightmare and doom of games that have gone to Hollywood.
Although it is not official, Blizzard would love to have Peter Jackson aboard. Time will tell. Read the Interview.
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GameSpot: Let’s talk about the big news this week, the movie. How do you make sure the Warcraft movie—well, plain and simple—doesn’t suck?
Paul Sams: We’re not trying to take what we’ve done and…try to make a literal translation to the big screen. What we want to do is to make a great movie that happens to be set in a video game universe. That’s a differentiator, and a key differentiator.
A lot of it comes down to picking the right people. A lot of the other video game movies that have come out before this haven’t had the budgets, the right people, and haven’t had the right mindset.
We and Legendary want to make a great film, an event picture, big-budget picture, that is a great stand-alone, fantasy-based movie that is good for you regardless of whether you’re familiar with the Warcraft universe.
GS: Do you think Peter Jackson could do justice for the Warcraft Universe?
PS: Absolutely. Peter Jackson would be great. I mean, he’s a busy guy, and he’s a very sought-after director, but, you know, would Peter Jackson be a great solution? Absolutely.
There are other directors out there that are also very, very capable that we would love to explore this with. We’ve talked to a handful of these different types of people, not Peter, but some others. And, you know, while I can’t give out names right now, there’s some meaningful people that have expressed interest. And we have to go down the road a bit and kind of flesh this out. I mean, we’re really in the development process at this point. We’re a ways from production yet, so…
We’re feeling our way. I mean, the more the Legendary guys immerse themselves in the material and the more and more that they get a feel for this franchise beyond what they already have, and the more and more we talk and collaborate, the more we are going to be able to zone in on who the right people are for the material.
I mean, there’s people like Peter Jackson, that’s an obvious. Yeah, he would kick ass at this. But, you know, whether we can get him or whether he’d be interested is, you know, who knows?
