Sam Raimi to Direct Warcraft Movie; WoW to Reopen in China

Sam Raimi, the guy who gave us Evil Dead (if you’re a bit older) and Spiderman (if you have no clue what Evil Dead is) is poised to direct a (World of) Warcraft movie, Variety reports.The movie has been long in the making; Blizzard made a deal with Legendary Pictures for a film adaptation of Warcraft back in 2006. With Charles Roven, the producer of The Dark Knight also on board, it’s a team that’s almost bound to succeed in transforming the battle between the horde and the alliance to the big screen. And if the first movie, which Raimi will start working on after he finishes Spiderman 4, turns out to be a success, we can probably expect sequels, as there’s plenty of Warcraft lore to fill up several full features.
As far as the Warcraft franchise itself is considered, some will say that having a movie adaptation is jumping the shark; others will flock to the stores to buy the latest WoW expansion (which will inevitably coincide with the movie), and others (me included) will simply lay back with a huge bag of peanuts and enjoy the movie. Notice that I’m talking about a “Warcraft” movie; although the movie will most probably be based on World of Warcraft, the Warcraft universe has existed long before that (Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was launched in 1994.).This is more good news for Blizzard, whose execs have probably been very relieved to hear that World of Warcaft will finally get relaunched in China – after some modifications are done to the game. The game was banned after Blizzard switched local operators to Chinese ISP NetEase, which meant that the game had to be resubmitted for content screening.
Blizzard has been losing millions in its biggest market while the game has been screened for objectionable content, and – even worse – it turned out that some of the game content indeed was not up to standards of China’s General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) which requested some modifications. GAPP will allow the game to be reopened for “internal testing”, which means that at least those gamers who already have accounts will be able to play while the content changes are in progress. New players will not be able to play, however, until the changes are reviewed and cleared by GAPP.

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Sam Raimi to Direct Warcraft Movie; WoW to Reopen in China