A Warcraft TV Series Could Continue The Film Franchise

Films based on video games have never done particularly well, but that hasn’t stopped many gaming studios from creating new movies to get people more interested in their games. One of those films was Warcraft. While it wasn’t exactly what fans were hoping for, some are still curious about the story and hope to see some answer in a future film. And while there are still some who hope that Travis Fimmel’s Warcraft 2 movie might still do battle, we would prefer a Warcraft TV Series.

Plans For Warcraft Movie Sequels Going Nowhere

While film sequels might have once been likely with the response that the first film was getting, that soon began to dwindle. Then, in 2020, director Duncan Jones tweeted about what his plans for the franchise would have been and went into detail about the plot of the second and third films.

He spoke about how the second film would have followed “Go’el/Thrall as a young orc slave in Blackmoore’s gladiator camp. Here he meets and befriends a Tauren who tells him of another land to the west where his people come from, & where he might find allies & maybe a new home….”

The third film would have continued with “the gathering horde army and freeing orcs around the Eastern kingdom before a dangerous trip across the sea to Kalimdor, & the founding of the 1^st Azerothian city of Orgrimmar.

He said that the trilogy would basically fulfil “Durotan’s promise to give his people a new home.”

Unfortunately, with the resounding silence from the gaming studio, Blizzard, and the many lawsuits the company is facing, fans aren’t expecting to see the sequels anytime soon.

Continuing As A Warcraft TV Series

One of the big problems with turning a video game into a movie is that games spend hours walking players through their world and letting them learn the lore for themselves through missions, stories from characters or random notes they find. Movies have two hours to give their audiences a whole lot of information so that the story makes sense.

Fortunately for fans, gaming studios have realised that using a TV series format for their adaptations works way better for them in the long run. This allows them to give the slow introduction typical for video games before working their audiences through the lore of the story.

What Does the Success of Other TV Shows Mean for a Warcraft TV Series?

After all the love and attention that has gone into new TV shows for games such as Halo, Fallout, League of Legends and, more recently, The Last of Us, fans know that TV shows can do video game stories justice, so they’re hoping that they will get to see a Warcraft TV Series soon. Reddit users such as Murdash have said, “The Arcane series has made me realise how absolutely criminal it is that we don’t have any good long-form content of the Warcraft universe.”

While it doesn’t look like we’ll have any sort of World of Warcraft media outside of the online game for a while, fans are still excited about the potential of a new series. With the success of both live-action and animated adaptations of games, there’s no limit to what creators can do with a series based on the world of Azeroth.

Is Netflix Making A Warcraft Series?

Back in 2023, rumours started flying around the internet that Netflix was going to be picking up the World of Warcraft banner in the form of an original series on their streaming platform dubbed Warcraft Chronicles. Fans were delighted at the thought of a series coming to Netflix sometime in 2024 that could possibly do justice to the incredible game and lore that is wrapped up in the incredible game franchise.

Having first hit the world with its incredible potential in 2004, two decades later would have been the perfect time to bring a gorgeous new series to life. From the image that was “leaked”, it looked like Netflix was planning to release an animated series on par with other video-game-to-series adaptations that they have made in recent years. The gorgeous image was reminiscent of Netflix’s Castlevania animation, which is also based on the hit video game franchise of the same name.

With Castlevania and Arcane (the amazing animated series based on Riot’s League of Legends) already under their belt and how well they performed on the platform, why wouldn’t fans be over the moon about a World of Warcraft animated series coming to Netflix?

The problem? The leak was fake. Within days, the leak was debunked thanks to the keen eyes of fans on Twitter (X), who pointed out that the art in question actually belonged to @VladHarabagiu, an amazingly talented artist who is a self-proclaimed “Warcraft fanboy”, who had made fanart for his beloved game. While you can easily see why his art might have been chosen for the fake leak, it is so gorgeous that it is on par with the level of art in Netflix’s Castlevania series; the artist humbly responded that they were flattered and not offended that his work was used for this fake leak.

Once the news broke that fans had been duped, one Reddit user pointed out that it was hard to believe that Netflix would bring out a series named Warcraft Chronicles as the name too closely resembles the official book set released by Blizzard, detailing the history and lore in World of Warcraft: Chronicles Volumes 1 through 3.

Is There Still Hope For A Warcraft TV Series?

The short answer is that right now, it doesn’t look like any Warcraft movie sequel or series is in production, but there is always hope. Looking back at the success of Netflix’s Arcane and Castlevania, which even went on to have four seasons and a sequel series, Castlevania Nocterne, video game series adaptations are on the rise.

Outside of Netflix, other streaming platforms have also started cottoning on to the phenomenon of video game adaptations, bringing in new viewers from the expansive world of gaming. Amazon Prime Video has just released its trailer for the Fallout series, based on Bethesda’s hit post-apocalyptic role-playing franchise, while Lionsgate recently announced the 2024 live-action movie Borderlands, based on Gearbox Software and 2K Games’ action looter shooter of the same name.

If Halo, The Last of Us, and The Witcher have taught us anything, it’s that video game adaptations on streaming platforms are a hit with the gaming community, especially if they are done well. It might take a while before someone builds up the courage to take on a game as powerful and loved as World of Warcraft, especially after the flop that was the Warcraft movie, but it is bound to happen. Let’s just hope it happens in our lifetime.

Are you keen on a Warcraft TV Series?