This week, video game developer Blizzard held its annual BlizzCon event—a convention that celebrates Dairy Queen’s famous ice cream treat as well as the studio behind Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo—and it took some time out from discussing Actions Per Minute ratings and kung-fu panda lore to finally announce the full cast list for Legendary Pictures and director Duncan Jones’ Warcraft movie. We’ve been getting jerked around for over a year now with various reports—some Colin Farrell-related, some not—but now we know which humans will be playing which human characters, and which hideous, green humans will be playing which orcs.
According to Game Informer, Travis Fimmel—who plays Ragnar Lothbrok on Vikings—will be leading the humans as war hero Anduin Lothar, with Dominic Cooper playing King Llane Wrynn, Paula Patton as “strong-willed survivor” Garona, and Ben Foster as the “mysterious” Medivh. Heading up Team Orc—better known as “The Horde”—is Toby Kebbel, the guy who’ll be playing Doctor Doom in the Fantastic Four reboot. He’ll be Durotan, the “noble Chieftain of the Frostwolf Clan,” and he’ll be backed up by Clancy Brown’s Blackhand, Rob Kazinsky’s Orgrim, and Daniel Wu’s Gul’Dan. To people who are familiar with Warcraft mythology, those names all certainly mean very important things and there are decades of story that revolve around each one, but we can condense it all in a noob-friendly way for people who haven’t played a Warcraft game: Basically, it’s a medieval-type setting, and the humans and orcs are at war with each other.
Topless Robot was also at BlizzCon, and, in addition to some character photos, it managed to snag more details about what the actual plot of the Warcraft movie will be. Apparently, the storyline will be based on that of the first game in the Warcraft series, 1994’s Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and Jones says he’ll “spend equal time” on both factions. This fits in with the “choose your side” element of the Warcraft games, and has the added benefit of not annoying any fans who are especially invested in either the human or orc army. Warcraft is set to be in theaters in March of 2016.