Released in 2006, Silent Hill is considered one of the best adaptations of video games to cinema. Its director, Christophe Gans, does not intend to stop there!
Silent Hill, a video game horror saga created by publisher Konami, has been on Sony’s consoles since the first game in 1999.
In 2006, Christophe Gans seized the game to deliver a cinema version, still considered today as the best adaptation of a video game work.
A sequel was released in 2012, under the direction of MJ Bassett, but it was clearly not up to the first.
The public was not mistaken. If Christophe Gans’ film had attracted 800,000 fans, the second part was a bitter failure, attracting only 200,000 spectators in France.
Asked by Gamesvideo.com as part of the 4K restored version of Pact of Wolves, Christophe Gans has announced that he is still working on a reboot of the franchise on the big screen. The filmmaker had already unveiled this project two years ago but we had no news since.
“I’m working on it right now. There were the Covid-19 years that finally forced us to stay at home. I took the opportunity to write two scripts. The script for a new film Silent Hill which is completely independent of the two previous films made and which respects the way Silent Hill has evolved”confided the director.
I worked on a new Silent Hill which is a Silent Hill of the year 2023 since the film would be released next year… in 2023.
“Most of the time they’re standalone stories. Silent Hill is a bit like Twilight Zone, the Fourth Dimension, a place where anything and everything can happen. I’ve been working on a new Silent Hill which is a Silent Hill of the year 2023 since the film would be released next year… in 2023… and not a Silent Hill as I imagined it in 2006”he specified.
It’s a Silent Hill for today’s audience while being ultra respectful of the saga. I am aware that Silent Hill is a very great video game franchise and a work of art in the noble sense of the term.
“It’s a Silent Hill for today’s audience while being ultra-respectful of the saga. I’m aware that Silent Hill is a very great video game franchise and a work of art in the noble sense of the term. The people who thought up Silent Hill put a lot of their guts into it. To get to know them well, they are extremely honest people. For me, it was important to design a Silent Hill in the light of today’s public.”he continued.
The director then establishes an observation on the horror genre.
“It’s clear that today’s horror cinema no longer resembles the horror cinema of 2006. So much the better. Not that the horror cinema of 2007 was not good, but everything genre is changing.
I’m trying to take into account what I’ve been able to see recently, which is more original and more surprising in terms of horror films, and to see if in Silent Hill there are the seeds, or even the expression of that. Silent Hill has always been an exceptional game and ahead of its time”he concluded.
In addition to Silent Hill, the filmmaker is also working on an adaptation of the horror game Project Zero, which would be released in 2024.
“I worked on the script for the new Silent Hill, but also for Fatal Frame, Project Zero for us Europeans. It would be the next film. Besides, the script is ready. Over the two years of Covid, there had a year of writing for Silent Hill and another for Fatal Frame. In both cases, I wrote under the supervision of the Konami and Tecmo teams”revealed Christophe Gans.
As a reminder, the director’s last film, Beauty and the Beast, was released in cinemas in 2014. It attracted nearly 2 million spectators.