During an interview with SyFy about his upcoming movie, Duncan Jones dishes on his experience directing the 2016 Warcraft film based in the universe popularized by the series that now includes mega-MMORPG World of Warcraft. He characterizes his time working on the film as traumatic, which might surprise you since at one point in production he was hinting at making it a trilogy.
He explains that “Warcraft was a political minefield as far as filmmaking goes” because of studio politics, excessive rewriting, studio ownership changes, production staff turnovers, and yes, even Blizzard itself. After all, Warcraft was Blizzard’s baby.
“[W]e were also working with Blizzard, who understandably were very careful about what happened with the movie because their bread and butter was the game Warcraft, which was bringing in a billion dollars a year for them. So, whatever we did with the movie was likely to be small potatoes compared to how important the game was for them. So it was really a very active political landscape.”
On the upside, he says building the exterior of Stormwind as a set was his favorite thing.
The movie, you’ll recall, did very well at the box office (particularly overseas) but not so well with reviewers, including our own.
