Blizzard Entertainment has announced an agreement with the Warner Bros.-based Legendary Pictures to develop a live action film based on Blizzard's Warcraft universe.  Blizzard launched the first of its Warcraft games in 1994 and the franchise has grown to the point that World of Warcraft, the online MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game) version of the game has more than six million players worldwide, each of whom pays Blizzard $14.99 per month to participate in the action.  Legendary Pictures is an ideal partner for Blizzard, because it has deep pockets -- it put up half the money for two recent big budget Warner Bros. releases, Batman Begins and Superman Returns.  Having Legendary on board assures that the WoW live action film will have plenty of financial resources behind it.

With its large and devoted fan base (fans spend an average of 22 hours a week on the game), WoW has demonstrated the ability to sell branded products in other media.  Tokyopop's World of Warcraft manga is currently the best-selling English language manga title, and the World of Warcraft RPG (White Wolf) and board game (Fantasy Flight Games) have also done well. 

Upper Deck is pulling out all the stops to make its World of Warcraft CCG (now due out in October, see 'Upper Deck's WoW CCG Delayed until October') a hit.