Sam Raimi on what went wrong with the Warcraft movie

Suggests mismanagement on Blizzard’s part

Years ago, Sam Raimi was set to direct Legendary Pictures’ film adaptation of World of Warcraft. He left the project quite some time ago, and more recently, Moon director Duncan Jones signed on to fill the vacancy. Speaking to Vulture, Raimi offered a rather candid explanation of what went wrong from his perspective:

“First, [Legendary] 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,” continued Raimi, “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?”

Sam Raimi on Oz, The Avengers, and Two Huge Movies He Never Made [Vulture] [Image]