The big news in games this week was all about Sam Raimi coming on board to direct the long-in-development movie version of World of Warcraft. How long has the movie version of Blizzard's hit MMO been in development, you may ask? Well it's been so long that a writer who contributed a number of drafts to the movie's screenplay has just now revealed himself.

In a post on the Quarter to Three forums, Gary Whitta, the former editor in chief of PC Gamer magazine and now a big time Hollywood screenwriter (Denzel's next movie is written by Whitta), stated he had actually been working on the World of Warcraft movie script "for the past two years" for Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. The result was a screenplay that he felt "distilled the sprawling Warcraft mythology into a narrative that was easily accessible to the non-player, and everyone was really pleased with the results." That is until Raimi was brought in as the movie's director. Whitta states that Raimi "had his own pretty specific vision of what he wanted to do story-wise so that's the version they're now pursuing." There's no hard feelings, however, as Whitta says, "so far as I'm concerned Raimi is the best possible director for this."

[Via Blue's News]