Warcraft has been in the works for quite a while; if you dig on the Internet, you can find rumors of a movie going back to the late ’90s. And, yes, it’s finally happening, as they try to break through and make a video game movie that isn’t utterly terrible. And, hey, if nothing else, they’ve got the cast for it.
A brief overview of Warcraft for non-fans: The (overall) good guys are called the Alliance and the (overall) bad guys are the Horde, and they’re about what you’d expect from a high fantasy setting that cribs an awful lot from The Lord of the Rings. That’s really all you need to know, for this movie’s purposes, but if you want to dig in, here’s an explanation of all the backstory in a forty-minute long video.
As broken down by Coming Soon, here’s the cast, and where you might know them from.
- Howard Stark, or Dominic Cooper as he’s better know, will play King Llane Wrynn, head of the Alliance.
- Ruth Negga, from Agents of SHIELD, plays Lady Taria, who is not called the Queen for some reason, but she’s the good queen. Or she’s trying to get into Howard Stark’s head for her own ends. Could go either way.
- Travis Fimmel, from Vikings, plays Anduin Lothar, our hero.
- Ben Schnetzer, mostly known from Happy Town, is playing Khadagar, a young mage newly set loose in the world. Either he’s one of our heroes or he’s a grease stain by the end of the first act.
- Ben Foster, Angel from X-Men: The Last Stand, plays Medivh, essentially the Gandalf of this movie.
- Paula Patton, of the latter Mission: Impossible movies and 2 Guns, plays Garona, a green-skinned woman who is torn between the sides of Thanos and Star-Lo, uh, heh, Alliance and Horde.
- Toby Kebbel, of Dawn of Planet of the Apes fame, is playing Durotan, a good orc.
- Rob Kazinsky, who you last saw in True Blood, is play Ogrim, the orc who will one day wield the Doomhammer, a weapon of orcish legend and we’re assuming is plot-relevant.
- Clancy Brown, The Kurgan to ’80s kids and Mister Krabbs to everyone else, is playing Blackhand, an orc warchief.
- And Daniel Wu, an experienced Asian cinema action star best known over here for Europa Report, plays Gul’dan, a orc chief with black magic he can’t control.
Warcraft, directed by Duncan Jones, will be arriving March 11th, 2016, at least for now. Expect that date to get pushed around a bit, as the movie is currently in post-production. Oh, and lest you think the franchise’s central rivalry will just be a backdrop, check out the posters: