Warcraft’s Duncan Jones Talks Visual Effects, Avengers’ Influence, and Returning for a Sequel

Though video game-based movies don’t have the best track record critically or financially, Universal and Legendary Pictures are eager to change that next summer with an adaptation of the worldwide phenomena Warcraft. Speaking with Wired, director Duncan Jones opened up about the visual effects process for the film.

“Motion capture has become very specialized but also still just a tool of filmmaking,” Jones says. “We tried to do a lot of large, in-camera sets so that we had an actual reality that the film was built on top of. Some of the time we had [actors doing motion capture] on location, some of the time we had them on set, sometimes there was green screen.”

The film will focus primarily on the first time encounter of the humans and the orcs, whose design was at least partially influenced by The Hulk in The Avengers thanks to visual effects supervisor Jeff White.

“He absolutely nailed that character, and orcs feel like they may have some of the same genetic background as the Hulk,” Jones said. “When we found out that Jeff himself was actually an avid Warcraft player as well, it became clear how excited he was about playing in this universe, It was a match made in heaven.”

The subject of a sequel was also brought up, and though Jones said he’d like to work on an original project after Warcraft, he would ‘love’ to return if he has “the good fortune to work with the same group of people.”

Legendary’s Warcraft is a 3D epic adventure of world-colliding conflict based upon Blizzard Entertainment’s globally-renowned universe. Directed by Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code), the film was written by Charles Leavitt with a rewrite by Duncan Jones. The film, a Legendary Pictures, Blizzard Entertainment and Atlas Entertainment production, is produced by Charles Roven, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni and Alex Gartner. Stuart Fenegan, Jillian Share, Brent O’Connor, and Blizzard Entertainment’s Michael Morhaime and Paul Sams serve as executive producers. Rob Pardo and Blizzard Entertainment’s Chris Metzen and Nick Carpenter co‐produce with Atlas’s Rebecca Steel Roven.

Fighting for The Alliance, Warcraft features Dominic Cooper as King Llane Wrynn, Travis Fimmel as Anduin Lothar, Ben Foster as Medivh, Ben Schnetzer as Khadgar, and Ruth Negga as Lady Taria, and on the side of The Horde is Clancy Brown as Blackhand, Toby Kebbel as Durotan, Robert Kazinsky as Ogrim, and Daniel Wu as Gul’Dan, with Paula Patton’s Garona caught in the middle.

Warcraft is set to debut in theaters on June 10, 2016.

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