WorldOfWarcraft

Okay, so you're Spider-Man. You can shoot webbing out of your wrists and climb up walls and lift cars over your head. You've overcome countless obstacles, ranging from turbulent relationships to man with robot octopus arms sprouting out of his back trying to end you. You're one of the most popular icons in popular culture, everyone knows who you are what you can do and the three movies based on your exploits have grossed the GDP of an Eastern European country.

What malevolent force can stop you? What sort of evil can put an end to the amazing Spider-Man?

Looks like the answer is creative bickering between the studio honchos at Sony and director Sam Raimi, whose ongoing bickering over the content of the fourth installment of the series has finally forced the Spidey train to a screeching halt. It all seems kind of silly, really. Raimi wants the villain of part four to be the classic, although admittedly kinda' goofy, Vulture. Sony wants it to be anyone else. Raimi obviously does not want to repeat the behind-the-scenes problems of Spider-Man 3, where he was forced to shoehorn a villain he didn't like (the ever-boring Venom) into his movie. Meanwhile, Sony looks at the box office receipts for Spider-Man 3 and tells Raimi to shut up and get in line because THEY AND ONLY THEY KNOW WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT. Neither intend to budge and there you have it. Spider-Man 4 looks unlikely to hit its release date of May 11, 2011. It may even signal that the series itself is on dying legs.

Once Sam Raimi is done slinging webs for Spider-Man 4, he's going to jump over and attempt to bring a live-action adaptation of World of Warcraft to the big screen. Based on the mega popular online role-playing game that tends to produce thousands upon thousands of fans who refuse to eat, sleep, work, or leave the house, Raimi told MTV that Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan) is the lucky one who's been assigned the task of taking this game full of fantastical characters and transforming it into a film that could potentially launch a brand new franchise.

Says Raimi, "We would choose... something that encompasses lands and characters and storylines, and we would be true to it. But our story may or may not be about one of those central characters. We want to be really faithful to the game. We would have our writer, Robert Rodat, really craft an original story within that world that feels like a 'World of WarCraft' adventure. Only obviously it's very different 'cause it's expanded and translated into the world of a motion picture."

Sounds like a plan, though the obvious problem lies in convincing fans of the game to actually leave their house to go watch the film instead of finding a way to illegally download it so they can have it on in the background as they play more World of Warcraft. Adds Raimi, "I think we would try and find touchstones within the game to make it accurate and true and choose one or some of the lands that are portrayed in the game with as much accuracy and authenticity as possible."

What do you think? Can a World of Warcraft film actually work?