Duncan Jones: 'Warcraft will right the wrongs of game movies'

Like every parent, David Bowie told his son to put down the console and play outside. But that young gamer has grown into the director of the first World of Warcraft movie. Duncan Jones on tackling a $100m fantasy epic

When he was a child growing up in the 1980s, Duncan Jones would often stay up through the night, drawing maps on graph paper of places he'd only ever visited inside a computer screen. His father, David Bowie viewed his son's arcane video game obsession with suspicion. "Like any parent he would say, 'Why won't you just get out of the house and play outside?'" Jones recalls.

Zowie, as he was known at the time, spent much of his early life on tour with his father. A peripatetic child, even one cushioned by the comforts of a rock star lifestyle, has to find home somewhere. For Jones, it was the video game worlds into which he disappeared each day. "Games have always presented an opportunity to escape," he says. "But they are also an opportunity to go somewhere that you come to know well."