Frank Pearce talks Warcraft movie

Posted on November 26, 2008
Filed Under Adaptation, News

Again I’m here to give you some news on one of the biggest (the biggest?) game-to-movie adaptations ever. “World of Warcraft.” The most recent game expansion, “Wrath of the Lich King” sold 2.8 million copies within its first 24 hours of release. 2.8 million copies… Most games won’t come close to those numbers. Ever. And this is the second expansion, 4 years after it’s release. That’s amazing.

The boys and girls over at MTV Multiplayer tells us that Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime promises another game expansion in about a year, and executive VP of product development Frank Pearce gave an update on the adaptation currently in development:

“Legendary Pictures is currently trying to assign some names to write the screenplay and find someone to direct it, so it’s still really early in production,” Pearce said. “They want to make sure they get the right talent for those different parts, especially the screenwriting, because that’s the foundation for the movie.”

When asked if Blizzard considered making a full CGI movie in the vein of their games’ cinematics, Frank Pearce said: “The idea has come up in discussions but it’s not something we’ve really considered because it takes so long to generate just the brief amount of footage that we create for the game. That department’s focus is creating the footage for the games to tell the story; it would be a huge undertaking and it’s not really something that we’re ready to do anytime soon.”

He added, “It would be definitely be really cool. There’s no question about that, it’s just that the quantity of work that it would take is more than we’re willing to take on at this point. We’ve got a lot of work to do as it relates to ‘WoW’… we’ve got all this stuff in the pipe and that would just be one more thing on top of it, and that would be a huge thing on top of it.”

When Pearce was asked what he thought of video game movies in general. He could only name the “Tomb Raider” movies as ones he’s found entertaining. “There’s been some that have been decent, and there’s been some that have been disappointing,” he said. “It’s just a question of how much energy, time, blood, sweat and tears are invested in the movie. Anything we take on, whether it’s live-action or CG, pocketbook novels or trading card games, whatever it is, it’s really important that the overall experience is a high level of quality in line with what we do with our games.”

I don’t know if we really got anything good from that little interview. Well, most likely the movie wont be full CGI and theres yet antoher game expansion in about a year. That’s about it.

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