A good portion of Paul W.S. Anderson’s filmmaking career has consisted of video game adaptations, with his writing and/or directing credits including Mortal Kombat (1995), Monster Hunter, and six Resident Evil movies. (He also wrote and directed Alien vs. Predator, which wasn’t a video game adaptation, but there was a video game of the concept long before the movie came along.) Next up for him is a film version of the Sega game The House of the Dead – and you can be sure that, unlike other video game movie directors, he has been playing the game in the build-up to production.
Outrageous
Anderson recently sat down for an interview on the Post Games podcast. On the subject of directing video game movies, Anderson said (with thanks to SuperHeroHype for the transcription), “I think it’s important for me to be a fan. You know, it always shocks me when directors give interviews, and they’re doing a video game movie and go, ‘Well, I never played the game.’ Like, that’s outrageous! You know, would you adapt War and Peace and say, ‘You know, I never read the book. I’ve got the script, it’s fine. I shot that. The book, I’m not interested in.’“
Anderson said that directors not playing the games is “a disservice to the people who love the game and have invested many hours and days and months of their time into this world for you to ignore it.“
He assures fans that he always has respect for the IP and an understanding of what the audience gets out of playing the game when he goes into these projects. And he makes sure that he’s not the only one who’s familiar with the source material: “I always make sure the production designers I work with play the game or watch playthroughs of the game, so they know what it looks like, and the director of photography knows how the camera moves. All of those things are present in my movies because they’re present in the games that I’ve adapted.“
The House of the Dead
Originally released in 1997, The House of the Dead spawned a franchise that includes several sequels and spin-offs, as well as a remake. Uwe Boll directed a film adaptation back in 2003, and that received a sequel in 2005 that was directed by Michael Hurst. Now, Anderson is plotting an adaptation that he promises will be “very, very scary.”
In the game, players take on the role of AMS agents, a government agency tasked with thwarting the conspiracies of organizations that threaten the world. The title comes from the bureau they work for, because their life expectancies are brief.
Anderson is producing the new film adaptation with his producing partner Jeremy Bolt, Sega’s Toru Nakahara, and Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson, Michael Lawrence Goldberg, and Timothy I. Stevenson.
Isabela Merced (The Last of Us) will be starring in and executive producing The House of the Dead.
Do you agree with Paul W.S. Anderson that video game movie directors should always play the games their movies are based on, and do you think his familiarity with the games comes through in his own video game movies? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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