When Sam Raimi said he was bailing on Spider-man 4, the question then became, what would he do next? Although he announced that he was working on a World Of Warcraft movie a few months ago, it isn’t certain whether he’ll move straight to that next following his Spidey departure, or if he’ll do something else.
The problem with a Warcraft film is that it’s such a huge and complex world building operation that it might make sense for Raimi to shoot another film while pre-production continues on the fantasy film and they get everything prepared (which was the original plan, with Raimi making Spider-man 4 while carefully overseeing the genesis of the WoW film). However rather than slotting in something like his announced adaptation of Dennis LeHane’s The Given Day, it seems Raimi is going straight for Warcraft.
Over at AICN, they’re reporting that, “I chatted with someone that knows – and I feel confident in saying that the next film we’ll see from Raimi is going to be WARCRAFT… which after AVATAR, the concept of world building that particular universe could be astonishing – especially in 3D – especially after what Cameron just unleashed upon the globe. World creating Science Fiction & Fantasy… done by visionary filmmakers … well, it is a premium. We got THE HOBBIT coming, looks like an AVATAR 2… but the word I hear is that today – the phone lines were burning between a certain legendary locale and Raimi’s folks about firing up the furnaces to forge the weapons of war.”
The ‘legendary locale’ is probably Legendary Pictures, which is backing the WoW movie. However, while a hole in Raimi’s schedule has just opened, that doesn’t mean it’ll be possible to get everything ready for Warcraft at double-speed, because building an entire fantasy world properly takes time, so don’t expect the film for a couple of years yet (and Raimi may yet decide to make another smaller film first). However as things stand, it does look it’s all engines go for World Of Warcraft.