Here was a surprise for fans at Comic-Con this year: a mood / concept piece for Duncan Jones's World Of Warcraft. Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull claimed to be running late and to play this as a placeholder, but the previously-unannounced piece took the audience by surprise and drove them absolutely wild when it gradually became clear what we were watching.
It began on a blasted desert wasteland under an orange sky with green light glowing through the clouds in one spot. A lone warrior dressed in a mismatch of armour takes his last swig of water from a near-empty bottle and unsheathes his sword. Spotting a dessicated corpse nearby, he strides over and picks up the lion-headed shield beside the bones and armour. Then there's a roar, and we cut to some distance away where a huge figure stands holding a massive hammer-like club. It's a troll! This is World Of Warcraft! The crowd loses their tiny minds!
As the man across the aisle from Empire screams "YES! YES! YES!" in a frankly disturbing manner, Duncan Jones appears onstage to explain himself. "The opportunity to do something like Warcraft is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I know how lucky I am and I'm so excited! I'm very aware of what the goal is there to achieve."
Shooting proper, he tells us, starts early in 2014, so this was more a mood piece and concept effort than anything else, but it's a promising start for Jones and his team. And judging by the reaction here, it's found favour with the **Warcraft **fans.