A new report from The Wall Street Journal states that Roy Lee, who produced Zach Cregger’s hugely-successful Resident Evil movie, is now working on a Silent Hill film.
Roy Lee is a Hollywood legend. The producer has had a hand in some of the most successful movies of the last three decades and has a speciality for adapting pre-existing IP, specifically where horror is concerned.
He began his career with horror hits like The Grudge and The Ring, and went on to produce Zach Cregger’s Barbarian and Weapons 20 years later. Most recently, he helped bring Cregger’s Resident Evil to life, which has become the single most-successful film adaptation of Capcom’s video game series ever and the highest-rated video game movie of all time.
Now, it seems that he’s working on yet another iconic survival horror franchise: Silent Hill.
The Wall Street Journal published a feature about Roy Lee on September 20, where the outlet shed some light on the producer’s upcoming video game-related projects.
According to the article, Lee has a staggering 20 or so movies and television adaptations for video games that are in development or production right now. These include Prime Video’s God of War series, Michael B. Jordan’s Battlefield movie, and, most curiously, “Japanese horror classic Silent Hill.”
The existence of a new Silent Hill movie has not been publicly confirmed at the time of writing this article; however, Konami has been extremely bullish on the franchise as of late, releasing two Silent Hill games in as many years, both of which have been well-received.
Silent Hill producer Motoi Okamoto also revealed that Konami hopes to release a new game in the series every year as it works to reinvigorate its IPs across the board, including titles like Castlevania. With this in mind, the fact that another Silent Hill movie is getting made so soon after the release of Return to Silent Hill isn’t too surprising… especially given the success of Cregger’s Resident Evil.
Return to Silent Hill, however, was a flop. It’s safe to say that hardcore fans of the franchise hated it, and critics’ opinions weren’t much better. We at IGN scored the movie a five out of 10, saying in our review that it “isn’t the worst entry in this video game movie series, but it fails to accomplish anything that the source material doesn’t do better.”
For now, fans can remain cautiously optimistic for a better take on Silent Hill now that Lee is reportedly bringing his expertise to the project… though Resident Evil fans have been somewhat divided as to how Cregger handled the source material in his latest movie, particularly its ending.
Virginia Glaze
News Editor
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
