Blood Diamond writer to draft new scribe for World of Warcraft film

Blizzard and Legendary Pictures have brought in the renowned writer Charles Leavitt to work on the latest script for the film adaptation of the immensely popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, as reported by Hollywood news site Variety.

To refresh your memory, Leavitt is the guy who penned the script for Blood Diamond and K-Pax. The two movies have hardly left any doubt about what he is truly capable of. The news of Blizzard and Legendary Pictures bringing him onboard for the highly-anticipated film will definitely serve to raise the expectations of the fans even more, while at the same time making them even more anxious to feast their eyes on the film adaptation of the video game on big screen.

The relationship between Leavitt and Legendary Pictures is not anything new as the two are already working together on the upcoming fantasy film ‘The Seventh Son’ which is expected to hit the big-screens in 2013.

With the responsibility of penning down the script being handed over to Leavitt, there is a bit of confusion concerning the role of Robert Rodat, the man behind the script of Saving Private Ryan. He was announced as the writer of World of Warcraft film in 2009. It has not been revealed whether he will be working on the script of the film alongside the newly hired writer, or if he has already parted ways with the project. This would make a bit of sense since he is currently working on writing the screenplay for Thor: The Dark World, which is currently being filmed and slated for a 2013 release.

Commenting on the commitment of Legendary Pictures to the film adaptation of World of Warcraft, the CEO of Activision Blizzard Bobby Kotick told Variety that the studio is being extremely careful about each and everything pertaining to the project with the intended motivation of ensuring that the end product is as close to perfect as possible.

“[It's] important to Blizzard, it’s important to me,” he said. “They’re very excited about having a World of Warcraft film. They’ve been very careful and thoughtful about the development process.”

The World of Warcraft film had been announced by Blizzard in 2006 and after a series of delays finally brought in Sam Raimi as the director and Rodat as the writer. Even though the work on a story started, it did not get finalised. With the development of the film already heading nowhere, Raimi started work on Oz: The Great and Powerful for Disney in 2010, thus making the fate of World of Warcraft film even more doubtful.

Sensing a gradual decline in World of Warcraft subscriptions, Activision Blizzard is beginning to show some urgency and is eager to start the development of the film as soon as possible in order to bring it to the silver screen before there is a significant fall in the popularity of the popular MMORPG franchise. To prevent any further delays, Raimi has been released from the project and the hunt for a new director is currently on.

Aside from the World of Craft film, Legendary Pictures is also working on film adaptation of BioWare’s Mass Effect.