With the Resident Evil series set to draw to a close with the upcoming release of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Deadline is reporting that director Paul W.S. Anderson and his producing partner Jeremy Bolt are now looking to set the fantasy RPG Monster Hunter as their next potential franchise. Anderson has already penned the script for the first film, and the duo already have concept renderings of the characters (including the shot of a dragon above) as part of a pitch package which is being shopped to interested studios.
The logline for the planned movie adaptation reads: “For every Monster, there is a Hero. An ordinary man in a dead end job discovers that he is actually the descendant of an ancient hero. He must travel to a mystical world to train to become a Monster Hunter, before the mythical creatures from that world destroy ours.”
“What I love about Monster Hunter is the incredibly beautiful, immersive world they’ve created,” states Anderson. “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,” he continued. “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.”
Developed by Capcom, the same company behind Resident Evil, Monster Hunter first launched on the PlayStation 2 and has sold over 38 million units across all of its various instalments.
Originally published November 22, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
