It looks like the final film in THE HOBBIT trilogy, THERE AND BACK AGAIN will have some competition in heart and wallets of fantasy fans come 2015, with Legendary Pictures, the production company behind Chris Nolan’s BATMAN films, announcing that Duncan Jones, director of MOON and SOURCE CODE has been tapped to direct the film adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment’s WORLD OF WARCRAFT PC game.

Jones takes over the directorial reigns from Sam Raimi, who had been associated with the project up until comic-con 2012 when he announced that he had to leave the project for the upcoming OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT is a massively multiplayer online role playing Game (MMORPG) that has one of, if not the largest player base for any such game and allows a massive number of players to live, craft quests in the fantasy land of Azeroth populated with a mix of the standard fantasy fare such as normal Humans, Dwarves, Orcs, Undead, Trolls, different types of Elves and werewolves (Worgen), along with less common archetypes such as the Minotaur-like Tauren, dimensional refugees the Drenai and the most recent additions, the KUNG-FU PANDA styled Pandaren race.

These races are split into two opposing factions which the player can join the Horde or the Alliance.

No word yet on what the plot of the film will be, which races will be featured or how they will be realised (CGI for the more complicated creatures, or a physical effects?) as the script by Charles Leavitt (K-PAX) is being kept tightly under wraps, although production is expected to start by the end of 2013.

Jones, who along with other members of the production team live tweeted along with a showing of MOON on UK TV over Christmas, has been fielding congratulatory messages and retweeting jokes from fans at his twitter account @manmademoon, a good spot to keep an eye on for more news in future.

WARCRAFT is currently planned for release in 2015.

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