World of Warcraft movie to start filming in early 2014

After spending years in development hell, it looks like the World of Warcraft movie that had been announced ages ago is finally going to see the light of day. Producer of the movie Charles Roven told Slashfilm that filming of the movie will be starting in early 2014. “First quarter 2014 we’re going to shoot that movie,” Roven said while discussing Legendary’s plans. “We’re moving forward; obviously Legendary is making that film and I’m having a great time with Duncan.”

The Duncan that Roven referred to is Duncan Jones – the director of the movie. Jones is known for his work on Source Code and Moon. He was originally revealed to be the director of the World of Warcraft movie back in January, picking up the reigns after Sam Raimi left the project. The screenplay of the movie will be written by Charles Leavitt, known for his work on Blood Diamond and K-PAX.

The World of Warcraft movie is finally moving forward

Charles Roven himself has worked on many impressive movies, including Christopher Nolan's trilogy of Batman movies, as well as the upcoming Man of Steel.

As the movie side of things move forward, the game itself seems to have faced some hiccups. Back in May, Activison Blizzard boss Robert Kotick had revealed that the massively-popular MMORPG World of Warcraft had lost 1.3 million subscribers over three months. Currently, the subscriber base still stands at roughly 8 million strong, which keeps World of Warcraft at the top in the running for most successful subscription-based MMORPG.

There are many possible explanations for the steep decline of players over three months. The most prevalent one is that this is part of the natural cycle for World of Warcraft. The game sees a big boost of subscriptions whenever a new expansion pack is launched, and many of those new subscriptions drop off after finishing the story quests and doing a couple of raids.