Although several online fantasy games (such as League of Legends or
The game was released in 2004 and was an immediate success - within 1 year the number of subscribers (each paying £9-10) reached 2 million, and by 2006 rose to 5 million. Being a huge hit, with an enormous fan base it came as no surprise back in 2006, that a live action movie would be created in the Warcraft Universe.
Legendary Pictures acquired the rights for film adaptations and the game’s developer Blizzard promised to help with the movie’s development, yet the years went by and production did not start.
There was a time when fans lost all hope that the movie would ever be created, but probably seeing the success of recent years’ comic and book adaptations led Legendary Picture to put the Warcraft movie back on the table.
A new director, the British Duncan Jones (known for Moon [2009] and Source Code [2011]) was added to the production on January 2013, scripts were written and the casting began later that year. Filming started on January 13, 2014 and ended 123 days later on May 23, 2014.
The film was originally set to be released in December 2015 but was pushed to the 10th June 2016 because of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which premieres on the 18th December this year.
Besides the premiere date, not much was released to the public, actually the very first glimpse of the swords and sorcery fantasy Warcraft was made available to the public eye by director Jones, who posted a shot of CGI orc chieftain Orgrim Doomhammer on Twitter on the 18th May 2015.
“Can’t tell you what a relief it is to FINALLY have at least something released from Warcraft for you all to see!” – wrote Duncan on his wall.
The computer generated orc leader Doomhammer was developed by Industrial Light and Magic, who were responsible also for creating Hulk for the hit movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, which surpassed the $1 billion mark a few days ago.
