New True-Story World Of Warcraft Movie Casts First 6 Stars

Ibelin, an inspirational true story connected to World of Warcraft, has cast its first six stars. The movie is about the real-life gamer Mats Steen, with the title referring to his avatar in the popular game, which was named Ibelin Redmoore.

Steen was born with a degenerative muscular disease known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Despite the challenges this created, he spent much of his life playing World of Warcraft, where he became a well-known individual and part of a larger community. He passed away at the age of 25 in 2014.

The upcoming Ibelin movie has now cast Charlie Plummer (The Long Walk), Stephen Graham (Adolescence), Toni Collette (Hereditary), Isabela Merced (The Last of Us), Maisy Stella (My Old Ass), and Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs).

Ibelin is directed by Morten Tyldum, who received an Academy Award for Best Director nomination for his work on The Imitation Game (2014). He also directed the science-fiction romance film Passengers (2016) starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.

The script for Ibelin will be written by Ilaria Bernardini (Citadel: Diana) and Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove). Amini got an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for The Wings of the Dove, while Bernardini received a BAFTA nomination for the 2012 short film Chalk.

In addition to depicting Steen’s life, Ibelin will be based on the Norwegian gamer’s Musings of Life blog, where he wrote about his life both inside and outside the game. The movie will also incorporate the story of the fellow gamers he connected with and his loving family. Filming is slated to begin in Europe during the spring or summer of 2026.

This is not the first time Steen’s story has been told, as it was previously captured in a documentary that premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Reviews for The Remarkable Life of Ibelin were incredibly positive, with critics and audiences moved by the remarkable story. The Emmy Award-nominated documentary, which is on Netflix, explores how Steen’s parents thought their son lived an isolated life, only to receive messages from across the globe mourning him.

Ibelin is all but guaranteed to be better received than Warcraft (2016), the video game movie that received a 29% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes. Instead of adapting a fictional universe, Ibelin tells an entirely different and real story about an individual whose life was forever changed by the game and the community he found within it.