Colin Farrell Offered Lead Role In ‘World Of Warcraft’ Movie

With a mooted production date of January 2014 looming, casting on Duncan Jones’s World of Warcraft film seems to be finally moving forward. Two names have hit the presses this morning as potential leads, and perhaps typically of Jones they’re somewhat left-field choices. Deadline is reporting that the director is looking to cast Colin Farrell and Paula Patton for the game adaptation. Farrell, who’s not exactly coming off the finest run of form (his most recent films being the ill-advised Total Recall remake and the excellent but under-loved Seven Psychopaths), seems to be less of a front-runner than Patton, as the director is still testing other actors for the male part while Patton is locked into negotiations.

It’s interesting to see Jones look to solid if not necessarily star names for the production, which shouldn’t have any difficulty securing an audience given the bursting Warcraft fandom. At peak popularity, the game boasted 10 million subscribers, so a project like this should sell by association alone. That said, there’s a good reason game adaptations don’t have the finest track record in Hollywood. Translating the worlds and mythologies of popular games has proven difficult for such established properties as Dungeons and Dragons, Tomb Raider, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and Doom, so Warcraft could go either way. It’s a massive undertaking for a man who’s made his name on two fine but decidedly smaller films (Moon and Source Code), though with Blood Diamond scribe Charles Leavitt’s script to work from, Jones could yet pull this off.

Farrell tends to struggle when carrying big name projects but Patton is a welcome potential. The actress showed a lot of promise in M:I4 and deserves more than supporting parts in the likes of 2 Guns. More word on this as it comes.

James Shotwell
Latest posts by James Shotwell (see all)
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.