Duncan Jones on Where His WARCRAFT Movie Trilogy Is Headed
Director Duncan Jones previously confirmed that his soon to be released Warcraft film is the first installment of a trilogy that they have put into motion. Having seen this film, it’s easy to see where the story for the entire trilogy is headed. It does a great job setting everything up, and it will be awesome to see the story that Jones started continue over the course of the next couple of films.
During the Warcraft press conference that I attended, Jones was asked to say something about the trilogy and where his story is headed. As you might imagine, he didn't go into any crazy details, but he did offer up the following tease:
“You don’t make films this big and not hope that you’re going to get the chance to make maybe one or two more. I know Chris Metzen, who works at Blizzard and myself have talked about, if we have the chance to make a trilogy, what would story be? And what we set up in this film, I think, I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying… The Orcs had a home, they lost their home. Duratan, who’s chieftain of the Frost Worlds has tried to bring his people somewhere to give them a new home. At the end of this movie they don’t quite have that new home yet. I would hope by the end of the trilogy we know where the Orcs are going to live.”
I really do hope that Warcraft does well enough at the box office that Jones and Blizzard can tell the rest of their story. I’m not allowed to say much about the film at the moment, but I’m excited to see what fans of the game think of this movie after it’s released. When talking about the film, story, and how it relates to the classic game previously, Jones explained:
“The story is obviously a retelling of the tale of Warcraft one. The video game Warcraft one orcs and humans. We, many years ago novelized that story in a book called The Last Guardian. So in that novelization the lore was buffed a little more. You gotta remember guys, back in 1994 when War one came out story telling for games, you can argue this today still, I guess, but it was super crude. You had like a page of text in-between each mission. It was really hard to tell a story in gaming, it was super crude. So with the novelization we got to kinda plus the mythology, and kind of build out these characters more and more, and really once Duncan came on, we were very clear we wanted to do a movie about this timeline about this conflict since it’s such a, since its the point of commonality between the two franchises, or sorry, the two factions that make the franchise work witch is alliance and horde. This is where it all begins. So in looking at this story in terms of a script and what capable you can shoot, what you can literally build a story around for film. The mythology grew a little more, we made some kind of tactical calls to simplify certain themes or ideas, and really just make it work as a film. So it is not, there’s literally nothing to base it on. The game was crude and old, although I love it, I hope I didn’t sound like I’m… there’s no one left alive that worked on Warcraft one… so, you know, it’s kind of, I always like to call it, kind of… it’s the ultimate version of Warcraft one, I mean that like Ultimate Spider-Man where it’s all the greatest hits. it’s all the beats it needs, it’s all the right characters, and right kind of chemistry, but it’s streamline, it’s cleaner, it’s better, it’s sharper.”
Warcraft hits theaters on June 10th, 2016. If you're a fan of the game or fantasy films in general, you have to see this movie!