On January 27, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter will close the book on Paul W. S. Anderson’s lucrative live-action series once and for all, but it seems the writer-director is already beginning to plot his next creative venture.
It’ll involve another project sourced from the video game industry, according to Deadline, as Anderson and producing partner Jeremy Bolt have entered negotiations to jump-start Monster Hunter at Capcom. First announced two months ago by series stalwart Ryozo Tsujimoto, Anderson is now in possession of the first script, and expressed his desire to engineer a new long-running film series based on Capcom’s fantasy RPG. An early synopsis reads as follows: “an ordinary man in a dead end job discovers that he is actually the descendant of an ancient hero.”
What lends Monster Hunter to a Hollywood adaptation is the fact that the franchise isn’t known for its central characters, which in turn gives both Anderson and Bolt some creative leeway when it comes to transitioning the “beautiful, immersive world” of Capcom’s franchise onto the silver screen.
Per Deadline:
What I love about Monster Hunter is the incredibly beautiful, immersive world they’ve created. It’s on the level of like a Star Wars movie, in terms of world creation. There are no real central characters so it’s a bit like when we first approached Resident Evil and imposed our own characters and story on that world. I think this is a perfect IP for us to do exactly that same thing again. The Monster Hunter world includes these huge deserts that make the Gobi Desert look like a sandbox, and they have ships that sail through the sand. These full on galleons, but rather than sailing on the ocean waves, they sail through waves of sand.
You’re fighting these giant creatures, some as big as a city block. They live underneath the Earth and when they burst out, it’s like the best of Dune. You also have these flying dragons, giant spiders, the most wonderful creatures. That’s what really attracted me. I felt there was a fresh, exciting world that we could expose and build a whole world around, like a Marvel or Star Wars universe. Everything is about world creation, nowadays, and how can you build a world where you can have multiple stories going on? I thought this was our opportunity to have a cinematic universe.
Impact Pictures is teaming up with Dennis Berardi for the adaptation, and we understand that Monster Hunter will boast a production budget in the range of $50 million. As for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, it’s expected to bow on January 27, 2017.