When filming wrapped on Duncan Jones’ live-action Warcraft at the beginning of the year, the VFX crew at Legendary faced a lengthy post-production process to bring the director’s vision to reality, replete with all of the iconography one would expect in the world of Azeroth. Fast forward to the eve of San Diego Comic-Con, though, and it appears as though the mountain has been conquered, with Jones confirming to io9 that the film is ostensibly finished.
Though there are a handful of VFX sequences that still need to be touched up and put in order, Legendary’s Warcraft move is very much on the home straight ahead of its worldwide release in 2016.
“The status of the movie is, we have pretty much a finished movie. I have under 10 VFX shots which are being finished off right now, they need to be dropped into the movie, but we’re kinda done.”
Beyond that, the studio is also experimenting with ways to heighten the viewing experience. In fact, on the floor of the annual convention, Legendary will be teaming up with Google Cardboard to broadcast scenes inspired by the film through the minimalist headset. According to both parties, Industrial Light & Magic – the legendary studio handling Warcraft‘s visual effects – are also supporting the VR experiment, and Duncan Jones also discussed the implementation of the immersive tech.
“I was obviously focused mainly on the film, but we discussed what kind of experience we could give the audience through VR,” said Jones, speaking with reporters at the Legendary booth. “With this world building that we’re doing in the movie, is there something we can do that can give you that sense of world building in VR?”
Lastly, looking ahead to the future of the IP, Jones appeared overly confident in his hopes of spinning out an entire trilogy, and we’ve known of the director’s franchise hopes for quite some time. Of course, Warcraft‘s potential will largely hinge on next year’s live-action feature, but it’s exciting to see a director so passionate about his (almost) finished artwork.
Duncan Jones will bring the mystical realm of Azeroth to the silver screen when Warcraft finally makes its debut on June 10, 2016.