Paul W.S. Anderson Will Write and Direct THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD Movie; Concept Art Released
Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil) will write and direct a feature film adaptation of the classic Sega video game, The House of the Dead. There’s even some concept art for you to check out.
I had a blast playing this horror game when I was growing up. The first-person shooter arcade game developed by Sega in 1996.
Set in a mansion overtaken by grotesque, undead creatures, the game follows two agents, Thomas Rogan and "G," on a mission to rescue Rogan's fiancée, Sophie, from the clutches of the insane scientist Dr. Curien.
Curien’s experiments with reanimation have gone horribly wrong, resulting in the mansion swarming with zombies, monsters, and terrifying bosses.
Players progress through levels, fighting off waves of enemies with light guns while exploring the dark, foreboding mansion and uncovering its many secrets.
Anderson talked about the game saying: “I’ve loved the video game since the ’90s. Back then I was a big player of video games in arcades, which is how I happened upon Mortal Kombat. And pretty much at the same time, I was also playing a lot of House of the Dead.
“It’s a title I’ve always loved. The IP has grown in strength, and now it’s really cross-generational. I was one of the original players, but now I have teenage kids who also play. That is the real attraction for me, that you’ve got a cross-generational piece of IP.
“We’re going to base the movie on House of the Dead three, and if you know the mythology that is all about family conflict, amidst the action and scares. It’s about a woman, Lisa Rogan, who’s attempting to rescue her father.
“And it’s also about Daniel Curien, who’s the son of the man who caused this mutant outbreak in the first place and who has to deal with the sins of the father.
When talking about his approach to making the film, the director said: “My approach will be to reflect what this hyper-immersive, kinetic video game is, which is why Zack Snyder took these creatures and made them fast moving. This is a full-on terror ride.
“It’s different than what we did with Resident Evil, where there were lots of traps and puzzles and things to be figured out. House of the Dead is at heart a light rail shooter game, so it drags you straight into the middle of the action.
“I’m going to make a movie that mirrors that approach and plays out in real time, dragging the audience straight into the action. It’s not going to be kind of lumbered with a whole bunch of back story that might exclude people who know nothing about House of the Dead.
“Everyone’s going to be on the same page. Everyone’s going to get sucked straight into the action and learn about the characters and the plot, as they have 90 minutes to basically escape the most extreme haunted house you’ve ever been in.”
Producer Jeremy Bolt added: “The original director of the video game, Takashi Oda, was very specific and never referred to them as zombies. He called them creatures. Resident Evil for example, was very clearly based upon the Romero Zombie movies.
“House of the Dead is something different. These are more like weaponized mutations, these incredible steroid-ed up figures that have chainsaws embedded into their limbs. It all has a very Japanese design aesthetic, related to manga and films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man, where you kind of have bits of metal and technology embedded in human mutated flesh.
“And these creatures are keenly intelligent, another thing that set House of the Dead apart. They’re not just going to come at you slowly lumbering. They’re coming from the sides, they’re coming from the back. They’re trying to trick you. They’re trying to trap you. And the level of intelligence differs.
“And they’re all being driven on ultimately by Dr. Curien, whose life force and intelligence lives on, almost like AI. The flesh is dead, but the mind lives on in a character called The Wheel of Fate. And he like all of the great villains from House of the Dead and Creatures, they’re all named after Tarot cards. So the Wheel of Fate, Death, the Magician.”
Sega’s Toru Nakahara said: “Sega was a little skeptical about getting involved in big Hollywood productions, the idea that ‘they’re sharks, they’re going to rip us off.’
“But I convinced them, and working with Paramount on Sonic changed the dynamic toward our transmedia policies and since then we’ve been actively developing a lot of productions, looking at it as an initiative to expand the whole Sega brand.
“I got to know Paul and Jeremy, they’re legends in terms of zombie movies, and Dmitri at Story Kitchen. They have a rare understanding of video games, and how to bring them to the screen. We want to add a cool zombie movie to the Sega transmedia basket.”
The creative team will be pitching the project to studios with plans to be in production by mid- to late-2025. Check out the concept art below.
Source: Deadline