Ben Foster and Paula Patton among the first to be officially cast in Duncan Jones’ Warcraft movie 

Legendary Pictures re-secured the script for its long-gestating World Of Warcraft movie over a year ago, hiring Moon and Source Code director Duncan Jones with an aim to start shooting by early 2014. Now that production has moved one step closer to actually happening with the first official casting announcements. Ben Foster (The Messenger), Paula Patton (Mission: Impossible IV), Travis Fimmel (Vikings), Toby Kebbell (The East), and Rob Kazinsky (Pacific Rim) have all been cast, though it's still unclear who they'll be playing—or even what sort of story the movie will be telling. Meanwhile, Dominic Cooper hasn’t been confirmed, but is in “final negotiations,” which will presumably be conducted inside a gargantuan dwarven mountain stronghold, until Cooper gets the flying mount he demands to ferry him back and forth to his trailer.

Absent from the list are Colin Farrell—who was previously singled out as a potential “lead” alongside Patton—as well as other rumored cast members Paul Dano, Anton Yelchin, and Anson Mount. They remain in the Screen Actors Guild, but it's seeming more and more unlikely they'll be included in this smaller, more exclusive guild within the nebulously constructed film adaptation of an open-ended online multiplayer game.