Programming clash

Jan 12, 2010 22:51 GMT  ·  By

It's a well known fact that movies based on videogames have a history of poor quality and of even poorer reception in the part of audiences. Yet the big studios, seemingly unable to find any innovative scripts to use for their projects, are still eager to look into the most unlikely of videogaming genres for inspiration.

The movie project based on the World of Warcraft MMO from Blizzard has been rumored to be in production for quite some time. And now it seems that it might take a little while longer to produce than expected.

A piece of news from the Hollywood Reporter claims that the production of Spider Man 4, which currently has a release date set for May 6, 2011, has been delayed by several months because of clashes between Sam Raimi, the director of the movie, and the executives at Sony Pictures, who are the producers of the Spider Man franchise, one of the most successful in the history of comic books-based movies.

It appears that special effects technicians, who should be working on various sequences, have been told to seek employment elsewhere as some months might pass before work on Spider Man 4 resumes. Sam Raimi is also the director attached to World of Warcraft.

The World of Warcraft movie is set to be produced by the same company, Legendary Pictures, which has also worked on comic book adaptations of 300 from Frank Miller and on The Dark Knight, one of the highest grossing movies ever.

Developer Blizzard is said to be deeply involved in the creation of the script for the movie but no details have been offered as to how they plan to translate the MMO concepts and mechanics to the silver screen. With the most recent delay, fans of the videogame might only get to see the movie at some point in 2012.