At this year's BlizzCon, the team behind the upcoming Warcraft movie project revealed the first details about locations, characters and races that people can expect to see in the cinematic adventure based on the popular game franchise.
The news came from a panel featuring Blizzard's Rob Pardo, Chris Metzen and Nick Carpenter along with director Duncan Jones and visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer. The group got together to show off some concept art from areas of the film including Draenor, Dalaran, Stormwind and Ironforge, according to IGN.
The plot of the film will be an origin story covering the first contact between the Orcs and the Humans. Game characters Lothar and Durotan from Warcraft 2 will find their way to live-action in the story. According to Jones, the story of the film was originally focused on the humans and the Alliance faction from the game's lore. However, the story quickly became about "being a hero no matter what side you're on. Metzen explained that a huge propriety was making sure that every player got to see his or her experience in the film, this meant representing the same balance that comes with the game.
"You have to be as empathetic for Orc heroes and their situation and why they're doing what they're doing as you are about anyone," Jones said, with Pardo adding, "the red side is characters too."
Metzen related the Warcraft film to the Marvel's Ultimate universe explaining that the comics give the creators a chance to keep the same characters and still retell old stories. This will be Blizzard's chance to tell the already established Warcraft stories but tighten up some of the plot holes.
"To tell a story where you're really, honestly telling it from both sides -- especially a war film -- is unusual," Jones added. "The fact that we're able to get an opportunity to do that is, on a story level, breaking a few barriers. I don't think you're going to see a lot of films with this structure."
The film will try to walk the line of staying true to the game that has such a large fan base while still trying to introduce a realistic element to the story. "The swords are the biggest swords humans could possibly hold," the team said.
Jones was not able to reveal too much about the cast but did confirm that he had actors chosen. "Any of you who know your lore will see that there are definitely opportunities for some very strong female, lead roles."
The Warcraft movie will begin filming in early 2014 and is set to open in December 2015.
