Sam Raimi Excited to create the World of Warcraft

"I really wanna do (direct) World of Warcraft"
quotes Sam Raimi

At the recent Saturn Awards, director (of the Evil Dead trilogy, and the Spider-man movies) Sam Raimi talked to the media about his involvement with making a WORLD OF WARCRAFT movie. And he reveals that he is actually, in fact very much excited about making one. And is in the early stages of developing a treatment for its adaptation.

Close to a month ago, there were reports that say Raimi was also involved in developing "Oz, The Great and Powerful" which is said to be a prequel of the classic "Wizard of Oz". This has actually shook the paranoia of fans, fearing Raimi might be handling this instead of W.o.W.

But this recent interview does confirm that Raimi has no current commitment with that Oz project. He has also denied rumors that he is connected with the development of The Hobbit. And as for now, he is focusing his sights on W.o.W. with much love.

Raimi even reveals that he does play the game and reveals what kind of character he plays and what level he has reached.

Sam Raimi is one of those rare directors that are pure geeks. The kind of geek that takes the world of fantasy with a cinematographically serious approach. His massive popularity came from his being the director of the successful Spider-man movies. But before he did that he went through the lowest and most simplest of B-movie director statuses. His first full length feature EVIL DEAD went to become a cult classic, along with its 2 sequels EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN and EVIL DEAD 3: ARMY OF DARKNESS. In an interview with Peter Jackson for Lord of the Rings, he cited inspiration coming from the battle scenes of ARMY of DARKNESS In making his seige war scenes for Rings. If Raimi can make an epic (Army of Darkness) out of a B-movie budget, imagine how much more he can make now that he is in a high profile status filmmaker.

Check out the video...

Webb of Spider-man?

(500) Days of Raimi Ends; (500) Days of Webb Begins

Sony Pictures and Marvel Entertainment have confirmed that Marc '(500) Days of Summer' Webb will direct the 2012 Spider-Man reboot. Written by James Vanderbilt, Webb will work closely with producers Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin in developing the project, which will begin production later this year.

To those who just caught up with the Spider-man news, here's a quick review: Spider-man director Sam Raimi (who obviously was unhappy about how the studios forced his creative hand in the making of "Spider-man 3" to do things he felt was not right) came into various clashes with the producers in the creative process of making "Spider-man 4" As a result, Raimi was fired and the producers decided to take the Spider-man series for a reboot. That means we have to go back to the start of the Spider-man story, but this time, they want a Spider-man series focused on the younger, more teen version of the story (possibly in order to target a "Twilight" demographic), and a director who can work well with the studio executives.

Now, it seems that they have chosen their slave..uhh ehem... I mean... director for the restart/reboot.
On the other hand, Marc Webb is really a great director. I personally freaking LOVED his movie (500) Days of Summer. In fact, I am relieved that Webb got the directorial job for Spider-man (rather than some hack like Bay or Ratner). But what I am upset about is that this is still going to be a reboot, this is going back to the high school days of Peter Parker, what we really want is for the Spider-man story to move forward, not needlessly remake a Spider-man origin story which is already brilliant to begin with.

I'm gonna sound mean, but I sure do hope that those executives be taught a lesson; I hope that by the time this reboot comes out, it will flop miserably. So miserable that they would wish they had not fired Raimi in the first place. Webb may be a great director, but with pushy executives like this, things may not be as what was originally intended. Just look at how stupid "X-men Origins: Wolverine" was.

Spider-man 4 & Raimi No More

Producers attempt to meddle in creative process ends in the firing of director Sam Raimi and rebooting Spider-man series

Bad news to Spider-man fans. The upcoming Spider-man 4 is scrapped, kicking out Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, et al., and rebooting the series instead. EW reports that Sony wants “a more gritty, contemporary redo of the series,”

But this is Spider-man, not Daredevil or Batman, or the Punisher. You don't need a Spider-man movie to be dark to be good. In fact, forcing it to be dark and gritty may even possibly make this a bad movie.

EW also reports that Sony was always aiming to reboot the series in 2012 no matter what, but they did want one last outing with Raimi, Maguire, and co. According to Collider.com's Matt Goldberg, "this means that Sony just pushed up the timetable on setting up a crappy precedent where they don’t have to use over forty years of material from the comics, but can just keep redoing the series to suit the demographic with the most purchasing power at the time. That’s why when Sony means Peter Parker is going back to high-school, it means they’re skewing towards the Twilight crowd because they know the fanboys will nut up, take it, and then complain about it after they’ve already paid x-amount of dollars to see it (most likely in 3D; Sony hasn’t announced that for this new movie, but it’s a safe assumption they’ll jump on that bandwagon as well)."

In my opinion, what made the Spider-man movies successful was the masterful direction of Sam Raimi, who is a true fan of the Spider-man comics ever since his childhood. If you ask me, before Dark Knight came out, I had considered Spider-man 2 to be THE best superhero movie. But the third movie, Spider-man 3 was a critical failure because it was already there on that stage that the producers started to meddle with the creative process of making the movie; it was here when they began barking orders to Raimi to utilize their own ideas instead of Raimi's. It would be logically surmised that Raimi would not let this failure be repeated when they set out to make Spider-man 4. Now, the producers have fired him and want a new director they could easily bark orders to.

Spider-Man 4 delayed over script clashes

Sony & Sam Raimi have differing ideas for the film's villains
By Carl DiOrio and Borys Kit

The latest Spidey sequel is proving villainously difficult to plot out.

Sony and director Sam Raimi are at loggerheads over which direction to go with the villains for the latest installment -- an impasse which has prompted the studio to delay its scheduled spring production start and potentially to bump the pic from its May 6, 2011 release slot.

Raimi wants to have a criminal known as the Vulture act as the primary antagonist in the film while the studio, which dislikes the idea of the winged wrongdoer, is pushing for a romantic sub-plot involving a burglar named the Black Cat in addition to another villain.

A succession of writers has tried to marry the two parties' differing visions to no effect.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire ("Rabbit Hole") was hired in October 2008 to pen a key version of the screenplay, on top of the earlier version penned by James Vanderbilt ("Zodiac"). Last year, Sony brought in Gary Ross -- Oscar-nominated for his adapted script on 2003's "Seabiscuit" -- which he also helmed.

Alvin Sargent is penning the latest iteration.

Word of the Sony-Raimi conflict first surfaced mid-December on genre Web site IESB, but at the time Sony denied the report, saying tweaking of the script was "nothing unusual."

The differing views about the villain have their origins in the making of "Spider-Man 3."

Raimi, a fan of the wall-crawling super-hero since the character's 1960s debut, wanted to use classic villain Vulture in addition to Sandman, another classic creation, for that movie. The studio pushed him to use Venom, a character that was introduced in the late 1980s, because it thought that character, with its slick alien-symbiote origin, would lend itself to more effective marketing material and a way to attract "the kids."

"Spider-Man 3," while ensnaring $890 million in its worldwide web, turned out to be reviled by both the fanboy community and by many critics. In addition to a hefty paycheck, Raimi purportedly returned to helm the fourth installment in order to leave the series on a high note.

Production still could begin by this summer. While Sony insiders maintain the pic still could remain in its current release date, a shift to a date later in summer 2011 may be more likely considering the lack of a final script for the visual effects-driven project.

SOURCE: The Hollywood Reporter