It may have been shunted from its 2015 release slot by a certain space opera, but World Of Warcraft's realms of orcs, tauren, elves and humans aren't taking it lying down. Duncan Jones' fantasy adaptation is gearing up to shoot and one of its complement, Dominic Cooper, took a break from promoting Sky's Ian Fleming miniseries to share storyline hints with Crave Online and 12 million Warcraft fans around the world.
“There’s a very human story at the heart of it because there’s a few of us that are humans in it that are up against tribes", Cooper explained, "and problematic issues that exist in the world that we exist in.”
The ever-warring **Warcraft **world will be soaked in real-world resonance, he said. “It’s happening all over the world at the moment and you see it happening all over. People have savaged their own lands and their own environment and they’re having to find a new environment in which to move into through the hostility of others. If there’s something as poignant as that that we can relate to and that we see unfolding in everyday life, then it will make it a worthwhile story.”
Cooper, who has another video-game adaptation, Need For Speed, in the works, also tackled the questionable track record of game-to-movie adaptations. “I saw [the script] and I don’t know it as a video game, but the story is great. It’s when they make the video games and they think that they can just be sold on the idea and the fact that they are successful video games. What they forget is actually you have an ability to interact with a video game and that’s why they’re so successful."
So what's the key to a winning adaptation? "The pleasure in a film is to be immersed in the world in a brilliantly", says Cooper, "even more beautiful than a video game, so there’s got to be something more special about it and that ultimately comes down to storyline and content".
Encouraging words from someone closely involved in the project. If Jones, screenwriter Charles Leavitt and Dark Knight trilogy producer Charles Roven have made good on them, fans of Blizzard Entertainment’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game will want to count the days until its March 2016 release date. But where will all this lead? We've had a few ideas...