Much as we like and respect Christophe Gans, there's no getting around it: the recent Return to Silent Hill was a serious misfire, and nobody can pretend otherwise. The film was roundly rejected by critics and audiences alike (18% on Rotten Tomatoes, 28% from the public), and over at Konami, one suspects the mood wasn't much brighter. Will that setback stop Hollywood from making another one? Not a chance. Or so a Wall Street Journal piece on producer Roy Lee, a man heavily involved in video game adaptations in Hollywood, would suggest. And it's in that very Wall Street Journal article that the Silent Hill question has resurfaced.
Roy Lee. The name probably doesn't mean much to you, but he's a busy man indeed. He started out on American remakes of Asian horror films such as The Ring and The Grudge, before racking up hits with other big properties like The LEGO Movie, Godzilla vs Kong, Minecraft and the recent It films. More recently he has produced Zach Cregger's films, including Barbarian and Weapons, and above all the recent Resident Evil, a smash with critics (95% on Rotten Tomatoes, unheard of for a video game adaptation) and at the box office, with $100 million taken worldwide in a single weekend. The paper noted that Lee currently has around twenty game-related projects in development, among them the God of War series for Prime Video, the Battlefield film with Michael B. Jordan and, mentioned almost in passing, "Japanese horror classic Silent Hill".
Naturally, at this stage there's been no official announcement about this new project, but the remark hasn't gone unnoticed, believe me. For now we know nothing about it, not even what stage it's at, but Silent Hill appearing on the list of productions Roy Lee is shepherding already tells us something about what's brewing behind the scenes. Either way, video games are taking up an ever-larger share of Lee's slate — he also produced the Until Dawn film.
And without Zach Cregger, too
Of course, since Roy Lee's name is so often linked with Zach Cregger's, the director could well be the one to take Silent Hill to the big screen, but he has said he took on Resident Evil because he was a fan of the series himself. He's never professed any such attachment to Silent Hill. So we'll have to wait for a possible confirmation from Konami, Sony Pictures or Roy Lee to learn more. In short, nothing is confirmed, but the idea is in the air.
