Robert Rodat is tackling the Warcraft script

Posted on October 14, 2009
Filed Under Adaptation, Directors, News

I don’t know how long we’ve been reading (and posting) about the adaptation of the online computer game “World of Warcraft.” It seem like forever… Anyway, things are finally starting to happening and director Sam Raimi shared some very interesting news with MTV Movies Blog in a phone interview last week. Among the revelations Raimi had to share was that “Saving Private Ryan” writer Robert Rodat will be tackling the “Warcraft” script. (They are going all out on this one!)

The story will be an original effort based in the universe of the popular online role-playing game. “We would choose… something that encompasses lands and characters and storylines, and we would be true to it. But our story may or may not be about one of those central characters. They might be in the picture, those characters that these myths are told about, but they would be more supporting characters.”

The aim is to adapt the game, rather than a previously conceived story written within that world. “We want to be really faithful to the game,” Raimi said. “We would have our writer, Robert Rodat, really craft an original story within that world that feels like a ‘World of WarCraft’ adventure. Only obviously it’s very different ’cause it’s expanded and translated into the world of a motion picture.”

Raimi understands that there’s a massive “Warcraft” fanbase out there, and a need to serve those fans as much as he serves the need to create a mass-marketable event film. The hope is that they’ll properly capture “the Horde and the Alliance and the mythology that takes place in the game, and the archetypes that the game presents. I think we would try and find touchstones within the game to make it accurate and true and choose one or some of the lands that are portrayed in the game with as much accuracy and authenticity as possible.”

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