All hell broke loose yesterday in the world of Spider-Man, with Sam Raimi leaving his directorial position for Spider-Man 4 and Tobe Maguire retiring from the costume. As such, Sony canned the script they were working on and are now going in a completely different direction. Unfortunately, the direction indicated by Sony’s press-release indicates we may be in for a terrible film.

“Peter Parker is going back to high school when the next Spider-Man hits theaters in the summer of 2012. Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced today they are moving forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.”

High school? So this is going to to be Twilight with Spider-Man?

Color me completely uninterested.

On the upside, Sam Raimi is now a free man and that means he has all the time in the world to devote to the cinematic version World of Warcraft, which Mr. Raimi signed on to adapt last year. At that point, Sam indicated he would begin production of World of Warcraft after the next Spider-Man movie. With no Spider-Man movie, Sam can now accelerate his plans on Warcraft.

There is one little problem though: a small movie called Avatar. Avatar has raised the bar so high in terms of world-building and effects that Mr. Raimi will now have to at least equal, if not surpass, the visual wonders delivered by James Cameron. Sam will have to channel new abiltiies, for he has never worked on a project of this magnitude, despite the huge budgets on Spider-Man. Warcraft is a whole new beast that comes saddled with massive expectations and a fan base that will hunt you down and murder you in your sleep if you screw up this adaptation.

Fede Alvarez will probably be a known name in the near future. He’s already famous on You Tube as the director of the short film Panic Attack!, which was made with only a few hundred bucks and looks better than most big-budget Hollywood garbage. Sam Raimi, impressed by the short film, has signed Mr. Alvarez to work for his production company Ghost House Pictures, which recently released Drag Me to Hell.

Source: Collider

So, Sam Raimi is slated to direct a movie based on World of Warcraft. Half of me is excited at the prospect, the other half is pretty confident the movie will suck. As a fan of the first two Evil Dead films and a moderate fan of the first Spider-Man movie, there is hope that Raimi can find some point to a Warcraft movie.  I quite enjoyed his latest movie, Drag Me to Hell, but that had independent sensibilities that found Raimi in his element.

But World of Warcraft? Ugh. As an inspiration for a live-action film, I find World of Warcraft comes up pretty short. Its plots, characters, quests and backstory are pretty derivative and generic. Nothing I haven’t read before in countless fantasy novels. Whoever has been given the thankless task of locating a valid plot-thread in World of Warcraft and translating said thread into cinematic gold has a hell of a hill to climb.

But there I go again, thinking Hollywood cares about making a solid movie with a good plot. This isn’t about plots and characters. This is about cashing in on a huge fan-base, nothing more. It’s about milking the World of Warcraft brand. If you’re a fan of WoW, then you will have to put your full faith and trust in Sam Raimi, but even here there could be significant problems. Blizzard, like Disney, are very protective of their brand and as such, will have tight reigns over Raimi’s creative ideas. Besides, Rami has some real clunkers in his past like Darkman and, more recently, the horrific Legend of the Seeker series. Which Raimi will show up?

For more details, read the Variety article.

I admire Sam Raimi. Here’s a guy who started his career making original, comedic horror movies in Evil Dead and its sequels, and ultimately found himself King of the World after the mammoth success of his Spider-Man movies. It is at this point, after such success, that most directors find themselves wallowing in the muck of Hollywood, churning out big action pieces that increasingly lack integrity, forsaking their past abilities. Not so with Sam Raimi.

He has returned to his roots with Drag Me To Hell, and from everything I have heard, it’s vintage Raimi. And that is a good thing.