Diablo movie

Blizzard has frequently expressed interest in adapting their game properties into feature films, but nothing has ever gotten further than wishful thinking.

November 15, 2005

A short news item on CVG excerpts a few quotes from Blizzard President Mike Morhaime in which he talks about hopes for future films in the Blizzard worlds. The interview originally appeared on our sister site WorldofWar.net in the Morhaime video interview which we released at BlizzCon.

Blizzard Entertainment President Mike Morhaime has spoken of how he "would love for us to release feature-length films in each of the worlds", letting slip a desire to see Wacraft, Starcraft and Diablo make the move to a new medium in the silver screen... Explaining the grand reasoning behind this 'love' in a recent interview, Morhaime has said he thinks that "the universes are rich and strong enough to support that kind of thing" and adds that in his mind it would "enhance the connection that players have with the game". Morhaime also spoke of a desire to see the mainstream appeal of videogames expand and about how he'd like "more people outside of the core audience" to be "familiar with our gaming world".

This is obviously just a "we hope to do a movie someday" item, rather than anything more concrete, so don't hold your breath. After all, all the way back in 2001 Blizzard won an injunction preventing New Line Cinema from calling an upcoming film "El Diablo," a ruling based on Blizzard's previous copyright of that title for an upcoming film. The movie was renamed and releaed in 2003 as Man Apart (check the 4, 2003 news for more details). Wanting to make a movie, or copyrighting a title for one, is obviously not the same thing as actually producing one, sadly enough. (Matt Samia of Bliz cinematics was interested in doing that all the way back in 1999, as he told me in this interview.)