It has long been a source of anguish for me that the film adaptation of World of Warcraft is being shot in my town, and even has a production codename based on the neighbourhood where I work. It makes me writhe with anxiety to think that literally minutes away from where I sit for 40 hours a week, there might be a warehouse or a closed set in which someone is doing insanely cool shit while wearing a practical Worgen suit. The fact that these things are purposely executed in a way that keeps nitwits like me (and our cameras) off the set seems like a poor excuse, especially for someone running a web site called “Werewolf News”. The Underworld films were shot here too, and yet I’ve never seen a Lycan suit in person. If I was a cop I’d have to turn in my damn badge.
This is why I’m less bothered than you might think by the news out of BlizzCon that the World of Warcraft film will be based on the original 1994 game, which contains zero (0) Worgen. There will be orcs, of course. Probably trolls and goblins as well, and I believe some of the heavier Horde units rode around on giant wolves, but as long been established on this web site, giant wolves are 1) not very interesting and 2) definitely not werewolves.
That doesn’t mean we’ll never see tailless bipedal werewolf people in a Warcraft film. If this first film succeeds at the 2016 box office (and how could it not? Films based on video game franchises always do well), it’s likely that they’ll expand the scope of any sequels to include plots and characters from more recent entries in the game’s universe. The introduction of the Worgen race was a major point of the Cataclysm expansion, so it’s not unreasonable to think they’ll have a presence in a future Warcraft film. For now, however, the big screen will remain Worgen-less, which is disappointing, but which also means I can stop hyperventilating whenever I see a film crew setting up on the edge of a wooded area.
