world-of-warcraft-movie posts

It was a case of "good news; bad news" this week for World of Warcraft fans. Blizzard's hit MMO game has now reached the 12 million player subscriber mark according to a new press release from the developer. Even with that new high number growth in the game's subscriber base has clearly slowed down. Blizzard announced that it reached the 11.5 million subscriber mark nearly two years ago. Blizzard clearly hopes the release of World of Warcraft Cataclysm, the third expansion pack for the MMO on December 7, will boost new player sign ups.

In related news, folks waiting patiently for the World of WarCraft movie may have to be patient for a while longer. Our sister site Cinematical reports that Sam Raimi, who was announced as the director for the adaptation some time ago, is now set to direct a prequel to the classic fantasy film The Wizard of Oz for release in 2012. While that doesn't mean Raimi won't direct th World of WarCraft movie it's looking like that film project has been pushed back by at least a couple of years.

It was a busy day in Hollywood on Monday and one of the biggest stories was the revelation that director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire won't be involved in the making of any more Spider-Man movies. Both were supposed to be involved with Spider-Man 4 but script disputes with Sony Pictures have caused the entire project to be scrapped. Sony will still make a new Spider-Man movie but it will be a new reboot of the franchise with a new director and cast.

Last July, Raimi was announced as the director of the long-in-development movie adaption of World of Warcraft. At the time of the announcement, Raimi was supposed to start work on the movie after completing his work on Spider-Man 4. With that movie no longer part of the equation, our sister sister WoW.com asks if the movie version of Blizzard's MMO champion game will be fast tracked. So far there's no word on what Raimi's next project will be.

You may remember that former game journalist and current big time Hollywood screenwriter Gary Whitta admitted publicly that he had worked on drafts for the upcoming World of Warcraft movie for two years. That ended when Sam Raimi was named as the director of the adaptation of Blizzard's hit MMO game.

Now MTV News is reporting that the new screenwriter has been revealed. According to an interview with Raimi he stated that Robert Rodat, who has credits including Saving Private Ryan, is now writing the script for the adaptation. Raimi also stated the movie will be an original story and not really based on specific World of Warcraft storylines. Raimi is scheduled to begin production of the movie after his work on Spider-Man 4 is completed.

We won't lie to you; July 2009 was a bit on the dull side in terms of news and exciting happenings in the PC game industry. That's to be expected after last month's flood of news thanks in part to E3. However there were still some significant items of note in the past 31 days. A few of them were revealed around the time of the San Diego Comic-Con which is becoming more and more important for the game industry.

As we do just after a month is over, Big Download has picked what we feel are the 10 biggest news items in July 2009. They include the revival of not one but two long dormant game franchises, the announcement of some classic games finally being made available again and word that a long running game series is being put on hold for a while.

Click on the image above to continue reading The Top 10 PC Game News Stories Of July 2009

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]