Blizzard to Boll - DENIED!

Drathos writes "From MTV Movies Blog by way of WoW Insider: Everyone's least favorite director, Uwe Boll approached Blizzard about making a World of Warcraft movie. Their response? "We will not sell the movie rights, not to you ... especially not to you.""

WoW Movie

[Obsi]

Why couldn't Peter Jackson and some of Blizzard's cinematics team get together on it? I mean, Jackson DID take a large, well fleshed out world and adapt it to screen with AWESOME results.

I love Uwe

[elrous0]

There I said it. I'm a huge film fan, and yes his movies are schlocky. But they're not meant to be serious cinema, just a little fun. Plus the guy is just a great character to have around. He openly insults other directors and movies (his recent take on the new Indiana Jones movies was dead-on, BTW), challenges critics to boxing matches, and is generally thrilled to be the director-you-love-to-hate. Personally, I think the guy is a genius.

And, being a big fan of the Postal videogame series, I think he is the PERFECT director to bring its warped sense-of-humor to the screen. I look forward to seeing the end result.

Re:WoW Movie

[Serenissima]

He definitely did a decent job. I wouldn't go so far as saying it was an "AWESOME" job. It had good actors, great special effect, and story line hacked apart like a Hannibal Lector movie.

Re:Come on, let's deal with this once and for all

[loafula]

I'm not a fan of the man, in fact I haven't seen a single one of his movies. I think the idea of this petition, though, is childish. If you have a problem with his films, don't watch them. I would mod you down if I had the points.

Twisted logic gem

[mwvdlee]

From the MTV blog:

And to be honest, the real gamers are the typical download guys, right? They don't pay anything for movies, because they illegally download the movies. So why I should please these guys?

If all these real gamers are the downloading guys, how come those games are sold so well that Uwe wants to license them?

Re:I love Uwe

[IndustrialComplex]

There I said it. I'm a huge film fan, and yes his movies are schlocky. But they're not meant to be serious cinema, just a little fun. Plus the guy is just a great character to have around. He openly insults other directors and movies (his recent take on the new Indiana Jones movies was dead-on, BTW), challenges critics to boxing matches, and is generally thrilled to be the director-you-love-to-hate. Personally, I think the guy is a genius.

And, being a big fan of the Postal videogame series, I think he is the PERFECT director to bring its warped sense-of-humor to the screen. I look forward to seeing the end result.

Uwe Boll has a Slashdot account?

Now, here is the serious response. You credit Boll with openly criticizing... wait, you said insult, not critique. Insults other directors, resorts to basic animal reactions in response to critique, and takes pride that he is viewed as the worst possible thing that can happen to a story you enjoy.

The man isn't a director, he reminds me of an online griefer. If Uwe Boll was his nom-de-plume then I'd think he fell victim to the formula, Anonymity + Audience = Total Ass (to paraphrase for work audiences).

The man is a walking tax writeoff for movie studios.

Fool! It's a trap!

[SatanicPuppy]

You're proving to the producers that 1,000,000 people know who he is...and care. That tells the money guys that giving him a pile of cash and the rights to a some beloved IP will capture the attention of 1,000,000 people at a minimum.

Seriously, the best thing you could have done was start a petition and have like 3 people sign it. I would show the people in charge that no one cares about him.

Re:WoW movie

[elrous0]

You dream about WoW at night? No offense, but you need a break dude.

Re:a shame

[ajcham]

Nope: Mundanity + Audacity = Mundacity

Nice headline

[DeepZenPill]

...where are we, Digg?

you know nothing of trolls and pr

[circletimessquare]

the first rule of public relations is that there is no such thing as bad publicity. if you get your name out there, you can do something to cash in on that fame and/ or notoriety. a million signatures merely means a million people not only know who the guy is, but are actually passionate enough to go to a website and register their disgust for him

thus ensuring you will hear about uwe boll again and again forever

the only way you will ensure you will never hear of use boll again is to not mention him. btw, a front page slashdot story, unfortuantely, extends uwe boll's shelflife

love is basically the same as hate when it comes to garnishering attention. just ask any troll. the only way to defeat a real life troll like boll, just like online, is to IGNORE them. if you give them attention, they win

so any stupid petition ensures boll lives on and on. is that what you want?

Re:I love Uwe

[thebonafortuna]

Who modded this "Flamebait"?

Note: Just because we don't agree, or disagree in the strongest terms possible, hardly means someone deserves to be punished for posting an honest, non-inflammatory, contradicting opinion.

If you disagree, go ahead and do so in a constructive way - by posting an intelligent rebuttal. But if punishing someone for taste were allowed on /., the boards would degenerate into Mac vs. PC, Xbox vs. PS3, Red vs. Blue, reasoned vs. impertinent...oh wait.

Re:a shame

[Wylfing]

Fade in to a low fly-by of a dwarf on griffin-back swooping over the trees of Winterspring. Cut to three adventurers (a human warrior with impossibly enormous shoulder guards, a female night elf with thigh-high boots and no pants encircled by a shimmering bubble, and a goatee-sporting gnome shifting back and forth with two giant-sized red-hot-glowing maces in his hands) on the ground looking up at the passing griffin rider. The camera swings to track the speeding flyer. Cut to an absurdly massive axe, crackling with electrical energy, cleaving the head of a white furbolg.

HUMAN - Pile those corpses high, Ihealuloolzzz. Lilkneestaßßer needs that agility enchantment, and those greedy beasts in Timbermaw Hold won't give it to us unless we kill enough of their enemies!

IHEALULOOLZZZ - By the light of Elune, Tànkérlordd, it shall be done!

LILKNEESTAßßER - Off and away!

Cut to 9-minute montage of our heroic trio slaying thousands upon thousands of furbolgs. Intersperse clips of them ripping beaded necklaces from their slain foes, and other clips showing them spilling gold-bound chests full of these necklaces onto the floor in front of the Timbermaw denizens. Over the course of the montage, we repeatedly see the face of an important-looking Timbermaw shaman. At first the face is frowny and angry, but over time it appears friendlier and friendlier.

Re:WoW Movie

[Cornflake917]

The GP didn't say Jackson did an "AWESOME" job, he said that the results were awesome, which is hard to argue considering the success of the films.

However, I think he did a great job. Look at any book-to-movie adaption, aside from movies based off books that read like a movie, the movies always fail to capture everything from the book. Given the herculean task of moving the trilogy to less than 10 hours of film, I don't think anyone could have done a better job. Yes, there were some important parts missing but unless you enjoy sitting down for 5 hours straight (I don't), something had to be cut.

Re:WoW Movie

[techpawn]

I'd honestly rather see Blizzards people do the majority of the work as I honestly think they could do an as good if not better than job than Hollywood could.

Yes, because we all saw how well that worked for Square/Enix...

It could be worse

[markov_chain]

Any of you seen "Bad Taste?" :)

Re:WoW Movie

[Smauler]

Quit being an old man and address the point rather than attacking the perceived person. LOTR, IMO is dull, both in book and film form. Crap all happens very slowly, the storyline is contrived and very simple, and the vast majority of characters are simplistic in the extreme. If you like it, so be it. Don't start hurling insults when someone criticizes it, especially not ones that have nothing to do with the criticism. This is coming from someone who has read probably a couple of thousand books, and no I don't want your pacifying drugs.

Re:WoW Movie

[pjt33]

I have often commented that the Lord of the Rings trilogy suffers from exactly the same problem as War and Peace: it has lots of characters, many of whom have two or more names/titles, so you need notes to enable you to remember who they all are.

Uwe Boll = Ed Wood.

[guidryp]

I don't think Boll is any worse than a bunch of other anonymous directors turning out B movies. He just seem the most well known among them. This generations Ed Wood?

I recently watched the Dungeon Siege movie. It was no worse than a bunch of other Fantasy B movies. The performances were often better than what George Lucas extracts from people. Can we go back in time and petition Lucas never direct again? Maybe everything after Empire Strikes Back wouldn't suck then.

I don't get why people have against Boll. At least he never really ruined a good property. He makes B movies and you pretty much get what is expected.

Boll the character is often more entertaining than his movies. His smack talking about his next movie, postal was hilarious...

We may as well have Boll direct the low budget B movies, at least when we see his name, we will know what to expect.

Re:WoW Movie

[Raul654]

"Look at any book-to-movie adaption, aside from movies based off books that read like a movie, the movies always fail to capture everything from the book." - this is a textbook example of a No true Scotsman argument [wikipedia.org].

Re:WoW Movie

[nuzak]

> Faramir, instead of being noble, was more like his brother

I think Tolkein made Faramir impossibly perfect, but I think both Tolkein and Jackson omitted character development at both ends. Tolkein has Faramir boasting that he wouldn't pick up the ring if he saw it lying at the side of the road, but never even put that boast to the test. What, is he better than Gandalf and Isuldur combined? Jackson, on the other hand, doesn't include the boast at all.

Re:WoW Movie

[nuzak]

> At least stop animation / claymation is tangible and real.

You want Lord of the Rings by Ray Harryhausen?

Here's news for you: stagecraft and cinematography are, in the end, all illusion. The red cloth that spills out in opera death scenes? Not real blood either.

Re:WoW Movie

[mdarksbane]

I think most complaints I've heard have been less about cuts than about pointless, damaging changes or additions.

There are probably 15-30 minutes of changed or added scenes in both Two Towers and Return of the King that changed characters and took up time that could have been either a) made the movies shorter and more palatable or b) been used to include more of the good stuff from the book.

I think overall he did a great job of capturing the look of the whole thing, and a decent job of capturing the main thrust of most of the characters - but some of the changes just kind of.. sucked, from a logical standpoint. Not to mention the character assassination on Faramir.

Re:WoW Movie

[doktr thunder]

easy to argue

Bill Gates == SUCCESSFUL
  but
Bill Gates != AWESOME
  therefore
AWESOME != SUCCESSFUL