INT: Michael Roesh

ARROW: What’s
your favorite horror movie?

MIKE:
That’s a really hard question! There
are a lot of really good horror movies, but “The Shining”, “Alien”, “Jaws”
and “The Exorcist” are among my all time favorites. Among non horror
movies, “Star Wars” (1977), “Raiders Of The Lost Ark”, “The Godfather”
and “Matrix” are my favorites.

ARROW: When, and how, did your partnership with
director Uwe Boll begin?

MIKE:
The first time I met Uwe was at the
Berlin Film Festival a few years ago. I was still in college at the
time, and Uwe had produced one of his first German movies. At this
time there was nearly no one in Germany who was interested in making
genre movies. All German filmmakers only wanted to make art-house
movies. But Uwe was a big horror fan and wanted to produce and direct
horror flicks and thrillers. So soon after that we started to work
together. Later I went with Uwe to Vancouver, to work with him on his
first American feature, ”Sanctimony”.

ARROW: You were co-executive producer on
“House
of the Dead” which received mostly negative response upon its release. How
do you personally feel about the film? Do you think people were too
harsh on it?

MIKE:
I would have
felt the same, if I would not have been involved in the production and
would have just seen the movie in a theatre. My personal
opinion is, that the story was going completely in the wrong direction
from the beginning. You cannot film the adaptation of a first person
shooter with telling this story about college kids raving on an
island.
I think most of the
members of the production team including Uwe were thinking the same.
But Uwe got the movie rights with this story and could not change it.
And,
for sure, we learned that we should not shoot a movie completely in

a rain forest. It was unbelievable:
the d Some nights it
was raining so hard, that we had to stop the production. It was
pouring every night
for 6 weeks and we lost a lot of time.

ARROW: You co-wrote “Alone in the
Dark” with
Peter Scheerer and Elan Mastai. Do you find it hard to write in
collaboration with other writers? How would you describe the
experience?

MIKE:
Peter Scheerer and I work
together as writing partners, we write all of our screenplays
together. We have the same ideas about movies, so that our
collaboration works very well. Although we like the same kind of
movies, both of us bring a lot of different ideas to every project. So I think you get a richer screenplay
with a writing team working on it. With Elan Mastai, it was a
completely different kind of collaboration. He wrote another draft,
different from ours. Uwe liked both drafts, and mixed elements of both
drafts together for one final screenplay.

ARROW: From what I’ve seen of
“Alone in the Dark”, I feel it might kick some butt! How confident do
you feel about
the movie?

MIKE:
Oh, I’ve only seen only a few minutes
of the movie in a promo reel so far. But from what I’ve seen, it looked really
cool! But as there are several hundred digital effects, we will need
to wait a few more months to see the complete movie!

ARROW: Does Tara Reid take
her top off in the
film? The fans want to know and so do I!

MIKE:
No, unfortunately not!

ARROW: Dammit!
Tara call me already!

MIKE: Everybody on set was waiting for the day when the love scene was
to be shot, but
she didn’t take it off! These days, when there is some nudity with
actresses on the shooting schedule,
the set is more crowded than on other days. Even some producers, who
never show up on set, sit on their chair behind the monitor on these
days!

ARROW: Gotta love them perv
producers!
Now, I heard at a certain point that
you were writing “House of the Dead Part 2”. Is that project still
feasible since Lions Gate acquired Artisan?

MIKE:
Yeah, we wrote a script  for “House
of the Dead 2”.  Uwe likes our script very much, and is in
negotiations about the movie right now. I hope that they will close
the deal soon, so that the movie can go into production. Our script
goes in a different direction than the first part. In our story, an
AMS platoon must fight at a remote campus against hordes of zombies.
Actually, it’s like a war movie with zombies!

ARROW: Word around the campfire is that you
and Boll are teaming up once again on a film called “Far Cry”. Care to tell us a bit about the project?

MIKE:
“Far Cry” is a really cool project
and we’re happy to be attached as writers! “Far Cry” is based on a
video game and tells the story of Jack Carver, a former Ocean Patrol
officer, who transports tourists on his boat. After bringing a female
reporter to an remote island, his boat is blown up and he and the
reporter get attacked by mercenaries. To survive, Jack has to solve
the mystery about a secret lab on this island…

ARROW: Sounds like fun! What else have you got cooking in terms
of upcoming cinematic dishes?

MIKE:
We have worked on some ideas for
other video game adaptations for some producers and studios in the
last few weeks, but are not allowed to speak about them right now.
Movies based on video games are going to get very hot in Hollywood.
And that’s great, because we love to work on all kind of genre movies.
And as video game adaptations are mostly genre movies, it gives us a
lot of possibilities to work within what we love.

ARROW: Do you have plans to
direct a
picture yourself one day or is screenwriting the pinnacle of your cinematic
ambitions?

MIKE:
Fortunately, Peter Scheerer and I got
an offer from an LA based producer. We will make a vampire movie with
him, for which we’re writing the script right now. We plan to shoot
the movie this
summer or fall. It’s a low budget movie about a casual guy and a
female vampire hunter, who are
forced to fight together against a mighty vampire king.

ARROW: Looking forward to reading that one! I
have to ask…being that you are a native of Germany
and I’ve always wanted to visit your fair country: German beer or German
women…which is the best, in your opinion?

MIKE:

For sure, German women!

ARROW: Well, I guess I’ll be booking my plane
ticket for Germany mucho soon! YEEHAW! Thanks Mike!

I’d like to thank Mike for stopping by the site and wish him some
“KICK THAT ASS” via the army of projects he has on his plate. Keep at
it Mike and I’ll see ya at the Pub, bring the women, the beer’s on me!