More details are trickling out about the big screen adaptation of ‘Warcraft‘! Now at BlizzCon 2013, more about the crew have been revealed as well as plot details AND concept art!

First up, for anyone who was worried about what has to be a visually stunning film, you can rest easily. Oscar-winning special effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer (‘Life of Pi’, ‘The Golden Compass’) is part of the visual team and he has four pieces of concept art here to give you a feel of what we’ll be expecting to see when the film is released on December 18th, 2015. That’s right we also have a firm release date for the film now!

Apparently when the script was first passed into director Duncan Jones’ (‘Moon’, ‘Source Code’) hands, it immediately required some re-writes. Fans of ‘World of Warcraft’ and its predecessors know that one of the best parts of these games is that you have the ability to play from either the light or the dark side, The Alliance or The Hoarde. Jones felt the original script focused too heavily on the human alliance and that just wouldn’t cut it. “It’s about both sides. It’s going to be red and blue” he stated.

Originally at Comic-Con, the film was still on track with a teaser trailer being privately screened. We knew that the film would begin production in 2014 and more recently found out that 2 actors were already in negotiations for lead roles (reports indicated Paula Patton (‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol‘) and Colin Farrell (‘Total Recall‘)  were in talks to star). On top of that, we knew that the script was being written by Charles Leavitt (‘Seventh Son‘, ‘Blood Diamond’).

While both of the above actors have been in negotiations, there is still no official word on who will be portraying what character. No official plot has been released, however, we did find this possible synopsis:

The story of Anduin Lothar versus Durotan, Human and Orc heroes from the original real-time strategy games.

As someone who played through the orginal ‘Warcraft’ games all I can say is that this is awesome! That gives me the feeling that we’ll be seeing nods not just to the ‘World of Warcraft’ game, but all of the previous games that led up to it as well! Casting isn’t going to be easy though as “It’s been hard to find an actor who looks like Durotan,” said Jones. “Every time I meet an actor I just try to squish his face.”

One of the really cool things is that the orcs are going to be human actors in makeup and not CGI which would have been the easy route to go. As a huge fan of practical effects, this thrills me to no end. As he compared the tone of the film to Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator’, I was a bit curious especially when he mentioned that “The swords that are being built are the biggest swords a human being can wield.” I just about squealed in anticipation.

This should look amazing on the big screen!

So fans of the ‘Warcraft’ series or fantasy fans in general: Are you excited about how this will look on the big screen? Worried that you might know too much about the game to get into it without having played it? Sound off below!

Source: Collider