Games haven't had much luck when they make the seemingly-painful transistion to the big screen. Most - if not all - seem to fail miserably, either disenfranchising the established fans of the titles or not appealing to a wider audience. Doom was a really poor outing indeed, Max Payne was a mindless mess of violence and Hitman... well... let's not go there. Then of course, there are the brilliant works of rubbish that Uwe Boll insists on giving us. However, there is one game franchise which is making the transition to the big screen that may well be able to break this trend...

At BlizzCon 2007, Legendary Pictures (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Superman Returns) and Blizzard Entertainment (Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft) announced that they were teaming up to take the universe of Warcraft to the big screen. The details were a little slim - no director, no cast, no crew, no script. All that we were told was that the movie would be set 1 year before the events portrayed at the start of World of Warcraft, would be told from the perspective of the Alliance and would feature a brand new hero, built from the ground up just for the movie. The only hint we got as to where the movie would be set was a concept picture of Teldrasil, the home of the reclusive Night Elves and the description that the movie would be about, "war," which is a bit of a no brained when you thing about it. We also got told that the movie would have a respectable $100 million budget (but of course, that's small change for Blizzard).

And that was all we got for about 2 years, aside from the passing comments that the movie was still in the pre-production phase. It was a bit painful really. I spent an ungodly amount of time searching the series of tubes, just to see if there was any news on where the Warcraft movie was at. There was nothing at all... until July 2009.

On July 22nd 2009, various fan sites began reporting that Sam Raimi had been attached to the movie as Director and Producer, with Thoman Tull, Jon Jeshni (CEO and COO of Legendary respectively) and Chris Metzen (VP of Creative Design at Blizzard) taking up other Producing roles. Soon enough (about 2 hours after the first reports) this was followed up by the Press Release from Blizzard themselves, confirming that the Evil Dead, Spiderman and Drag Me To Hell Director would be helming the upcoming Warcraft movie. Again, no release date was given and it stands to reason that casting has not yet begun (although I'm assuming that the script is finished).

Sam Raimi is a cult classic when it comes to Directors. The Evil Dead is one of my top horror-comedy movies of all time and I salute the guy for his efforts there. Spiderman was a bit of a mixed bag for me because the first two were pretty good but the third one was just filthy. I'll reserve my final judgement here until I've seen the fourth one. Drag Me To Hell hailed Raimi's return to the horror-comedy genre and again he proved his steel, delivering another cult classic that scored high in my books. One thing to note here is that Raimi has never Directed anything close to a fantasy epic, so this is a first for him. However, he is a very talented and diverse Director (as he has proven with his ecclectic range of hits) so it's probably not too much to expect him to do a good job. In an age where Hollywood consists of unreasonably poor Directors, Warcraft could have done far worse than Mr. Raimi and his gang.

So can Sam Raimi deliver the first, critically and commerically successful game-to-movie adaptation? I think that question relies on the idea that Raimi has full control over the direction of the movie, which I doubt very much. Blizzard probably have a very clear path, with everything mapped out in detail for the Director. Chris Metzen will probably have meeting after meeting with the guy to make sure that things are up to scratch (because if they aren't, we all know what will happen). A couple of things we can assume however is that (a) the Undead in Warcraft will be frikkin awesome and (b) Bruce Campbell will make an appearance, somewhere (probably as an zombie wielding a Warcraft-esque chainsaw).

So it's my opinion that the team of Legendary Pictures (a studio that delivered 300, Superman Returns and two of the best comic book movies of all time in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight), Blizzard Entertainment (the critically acclaimed minds behind the top three franchises in the gaming world - Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft) and Sam Raimi (a heavyweight Director famous for his cult classic and blockbuster successes) can together create not only one of the best movies of recent times but also the first game-to-movie adaptation to truly shine in the world of cinema. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of Academy Awards in the bag as well.

So where do they go from here? Well, with the attachment of a Director, the script is obviously done. Casting is the next point of call (and I wouldn't be surprised if we hear more about that at Blizzcon 09) and then they'll be on the location art and photography to decide where to shoot. I'm guessing the movie will feature a diverse range of weather effects, to reflect the diverse areas in the world of Azeroth so I wouldn't be surprised if shooting starts this winter (for some good old Northrend snow). When will it be released? Only God knows that, assuming that an all-knowing-ethereal-overlord-of-all-life actually exists (if he doesn't, no one knows). Blizzard will keep that card tight to its chest right until they are sure the movie is done. Don't assume that Sam Raimi's attachement is a sign that the movie is off scot free. Blizzard have a habit of deciding things are shite and then cancelling them at the last minute (see: Starcraft Ghost).

What about after the Warcraft movie? There is a long held suspicion that Blizzard signed a multi-movie deal with Legendary Pictures, including Diablo and Starcraft on top of Warcraft. As well as this, there have been a few hints that Warcraft may get a trilogy. It's possible that Blizzard may have signed Raimi for the Warcraft trilogy and possibly a Diablo movie. That however is idle speculation.

With Prince of Persia, the only other game-to-movie that I actually care about, looking decidedly average right now (look at that stinking font...) my head turns to Blizzard, Legendary and Raimi. Do us all a great service. Make Warcraft truly epic and prove that game-to-movie adaptations can be totally amazing as well! All I know is that the 11,000,000+ fans of Warcraft, as well as the fans of Blizzard in general will be hoping that Raimi and co can deliver a movie that will please them and most certainly not be a blatant cash cow.

All I would ask of them is that they do not cast The Rock of Vin Diesel as Orcs. Also, no Chuck Norris because there are no cinemas in the world capable of displaying his beard without exploding.