warcraft

Duncan Jones (‘Moon’) has been getting a lot of time in lately with the release of Netflix’s ‘Mute‘ and a fun fact has come up about his work on ‘Warcraft’. Apparently, and for an obvious reason, the movie wasn’t a priority for Blizzard Entertainment. The movie was a commercial and critical flop in the United States though received the exact opposite kind of reaction overseas which has opened it up for a sequel.

This kind of reception was what gave ‘Pacific Rim‘ a sequel and might now give one to ‘Warcraft’ as well. However, Blizzard Entertainment isn’t likely to be spearheading the release of another film.

Jones was speaking about what it would take for him to do another tentpole movie again which lead to an interesting piece of information:

“For another tentpole, if they were pre-existing franchises, I don’t think I’d want to do them. If it’s something they want to become a franchise but is new, I would obviously be more interested. Part of the enjoyment for me is trying to find a way to create and realize something from scratch. That part of it I would be more interested in. As far as doing a big studio film, I think more communication upfront about what it is we hope the project will be and agreeing on that upfront. “Warcraft” was a unique circumstance with no way around it. Too many voices, only because that was the nature of “Warcraft.” Blizzard is a company making a billion dollars a year just off the games. The movie was small potatoes for them. It really wasn’t their priority. The game is how they pay their employees, not the movie. So for them, the movie really had to serve the game, as opposed to the game and the film being separate things. Then there were also multiple studios, Legendary were originally part of Warner Bros. and then moved to Universal. Then Legendary itself was bought by Wanda from China, there were producers changing during the course of the film. It was a very messy political situation. I would hope that even if I did another studio film it wouldn’t be as fluctuating as that one was.”

Honestly, when you factor in the money which the gaming studio makes off of the game, it would have likely needed a Marvel Studios type of reception to make them perk up at all. Even at that point, with the time it takes to make a major motion picture combined with the cut that each production company and all of the cast and crew would take in, this is still just a drop in the bucket for them. It makes sense as to why they likely didn’t care too much one way or another as to the direction of the movie.

Do you feel that if Blizzard had taken more of an interest in how the film was put together, it could have done better? Were you happy with the movie that Jones gave us or was all of this back and forth between studios likely what ultimately helped kill it? Share your thoughts below!

Source: Coming Soon