A website called Vulture interviewed the now ex-Warcraft Movie Director Sam Raimi, and, as well as plenty of Spiderman 4 discussion, slipped in a question about his departure from the Warcraft Movie team. Vulture asked what the biggest obstacle on the Warcraft Movie was, to which Raimi responded as follows:
“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 [Warcraft developer] 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?”
What do you think about this? It does seem like a mis-communication occurred somewhere along the line, but is Blizzard completely at fault? Without hearing both sides of the story it’s almost impossible to tell, but Blizzard are well within their rights to maintain a tight grasp on their story, so retaining veto power is not a great surprise, but not communicating that effectively is.
Raimi did have some praise for the new director Duncan Jones, saying “I loved his movie Moon, and I think he’s a strikingly talented director. I bet that if anyone can do a great job with it, it’s him.”
What does this mean for the WoW movie? It rather suggests that the plot might be rooted in existing story to me, but perhaps that’s confirmation bias, as I desperately want it to be, but what do you think? And is Raimi in the wrong for dissing his ex-employers?
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