It appears that Sam Raimi won't be making the World of Warcraft movie after all.  This week at San Diego Comic-con Raimi spoke with Crave Online, briefly letting them know that Oz: The Great and Powerful has swallowed up his time.  Rather than hold up the WoW movie any longer, Raimi has stepped aside to let Blizzard talk to other directors.

Hopefully this is a good thing for the project, considering it's been about five years since we heard much more than a "we're working on it" from Blizzard.  I am still skeptical about how well received a WoW movie will be, and I have reservations on how well executed a movie about an MMO will be.  Since there are no major starring characters (your character is the center of your world, but I doubt people will be writing a movie about Mandie the Draenei Holy Priest) I don't see how the movie will pull in viewers and get them all hyped up to see it.  it's not like Harry Potter or Max Payne where you have famous characters to identify with. And then there's the notion of how horrible movies based on games tend to be in general.

All in all, while I am interested in seeing more about this project, the loss of Raimi can only be seen as a blow. Hopefully this change will spark some additional news about the movie from Blizzard, but something tells me they're a little busy at the moment.