Warcraft Movie Update From Duncan Jones

The Warcraftmovie is still 11 months away, and Duncan Jones has already been working on it for two and a half years. That doesn't even take into account the years leading up to this movie actually getting off the ground (at one point Sam Raimi was set to direct). Jones told a group of reporters (including Den of Geek) at the Legendary booth at SDCC about the challenges of the long production and his love for the world of Azeroth.

When first meeting Jones, the immediate impression he leaves is one of authenticity. His enthusiasm was positively infectious as he spoke about his own love for Warcraft and other Blizzard properties. "I've been playing back since Orcs and Humans, back in the real time strategy days," he said. "I actually used to play Lost Vikings, which was a game that Blizzard made even before that."

When I asked him whether he thought Warcraft might break the "video game movie curse," he was expectedly gracious. "I don't know if there's a curse to break, but I feel we've made a great film. I have an amazing cast. I have WETA who have built these stunning props for the film, the weapons and the armor. Gavin Bocquet was our production designer and he made these extraordinary sets up in Vancouver where we were shooting. We had these huge environments to shoot in, and then we have the motion capture performances where ILM have delivered, I think, their best work ever [in motion capture]."

Like the world of comics, when a video game franchise has been around for as long as Warcraft has, it might seem a little inaccessible to people unfamiliar with the world. That apparently won't be a problem with the film adaptation. "Right from the start," Jones said, "it was absolutely imperative that we came up with a story that stood on its own, and brought an audience who didn't know about Warcraft along with it." 

Putting things in non-gaming fantasy movie terms, "Not everyone who saw the first Lord of the Rings movie had read Tolkien, but Peter Jackson did a wonderful job bringing the audience along to get them involved in that universe."

The concept of Orcs vs. Humans has always been the central concept of Warcraft, and not only won't that be neglected here, fans who have a favorite should see both represented well.

"My big pitch to Blizzard when I became involved with this was that I want to make a war movie and I want to tell it from both sides. I want heroes on both sides, and I want you to empathize with both sides. The heroes from both sides are going to find themselves in a conflict that there is no way out of...There are contingents of heroes on both sides that the audience will absolutely be rooting for, and I think there will be divided loyalties, and I think individuals will be divided about who they feel they should be rooting for. There's certainly a Horde side and an Alliance side, and that is integral to what makes Warcraftwhat it is."

As far as characters to look forward to, we were told to watch out for Orgrim Doomhammer played by Rob Kaczynski.

"I think it's his best work. It was his first experience doing motion capture, and he really took to it and expressed himself and went to town. It's an interesting thing about motion capture, you're wearing what are basically silver pajamas, and you have these silver markers all over you and you can either get incredibly self conscious, where you don't do anything, or you can say I look fucking ridiculous and I'm just going to go for it. Rob went for it and it pays off. That character is one of the most charismatic in the movie."

A journalist asked if, after three and a half years on this one, if he'd consider helming Warcraft 2. "I would," Jones said. "I personally worked very closely with Chris Metzen (Blizzard's SVP of Storytelling and Franchise Development). We worked out that if we did get a chance to do three films to tell the story, this would be the first piece and we kind of have an idea of what we would do with 2 and 3. I want to be the guy to deliver that."

Warcraft isn't scheduled for release until June 10, 2016, and Jones has been involved with it since January of 2013. He described the film as "almost done" and simply waiting for some final visual effects work to be completed. "The film is done," he said, "it's just waiting for those shots to be dropped into place. We have our score done. Everything is kind of done. It will be ready to go out in June of next year...I feel like we've got something that's worth waiting for."