Sam Raimi had been developing a ‘World of Warcraft’ film for years, even getting to the point where he and screenwriter Robert Rodat (‘Saving Private Ryan’) had an estimated 40 pages of material but had yet to figure out the full narrative. Sadly, we’ll never get to see Raimi’s version, because the director says he’s off the project.

Raimi was in San Diego to promote his ‘Oz: The Great and Powerful’ at Comic-Con, where he showed a teaser trailer to gathered fans. But while speaking with the press, Raimi revealed that his commitment to ‘Oz’ meant he had to pass on ‘Warcraft.’

Actually, they don’t have me directing 'World of Warcraft' anymore because when I took the 'Oz' job, they had to move on to another director. They had to start making it.

So that’s a little good news/bad news, because even though Raimi’s off the project, it’s at least moving forward. ‘World of Warcraft’ is a massively successful online, multiplayer, role-playing game produced by Blizzard Entertainment. According to statistics, the game had 10.2 million subscribers as of December 2011, so you can tell why Hollywood would want to tap into that huge market of potential ticket-buyers. We’ll see what happens.

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