Duncan Jones has signed on to direct Warcraft, a feature film based on the video game world Azeroth, featured in World of Warcraft and other games.
The Moon and Source Code helmer is making the jump to a fantasy, tentpole film following two successful sci-fi turns. Legendary Pictures is producing the film from a script by Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond), although the studio is keeping the plot under lock and key.
The Hollywood Reporter broke the news, noting that Legendary, a Warner Bros.-based production company, is hoping to start production on Warcraft by the end of the year for a 2015 release. Stuart Fenegan will executive produce the project on behalf of Liberty Films, the production company he owns with Jones.
The Hollywood Reporter writes of Warcraft:
Taking an almost kitchen-sink approach to fantasy, Warcraft, which has grown to be one of the most popular multiplayer online role-playing games out there, is part fantasy, part science fiction and — depending on the game you’re playing — includes elements such as dragons and orcs, zombies and werewolves, and aliens and spaceships.
This will certainly be a change for Jones, who has previously made much smaller-scaled, thoughtful sci-fi pieces such as Moon, one of this writer’s all-time favorites. While we’d like to see Jones stick with smaller, more thoughtful movies, the talent is clearly there and if Leavitt is able to turn in a half-decent script, Jones will have something to work with. The report expects to see Warcraft have a budget of over $100 million.
Spider-Man director Sam Raimi was previously attached to the project, but dropped out last year due to his commitments to Oz: The Great and Powerful.
The Warcraft franchise of video games started in 1994 with Orcs & Humans, a top-down perspective real-time strategy game. By far the most popular title in Blizzard’s series is World of Warcraft, an MMO which still holds around 10 million subscribers despite having released over eight years ago.