The history of games moving to theaters is extremely suspect, but one of the adaptations generally considered to be pretty good is 2006's Silent Hill. Its sequel was less appreciated, but the series has always been amorphous enough to fit more stories, and thus it's getting a new installment. That news comes according to an Allocine interview with Christopher Gans, the 2006 movie's director.
That's not all. Gans also revealed a movie based on Project Zero -- Fatal Frame here in the west -- is in his production line right now too. Allocine asked what he's working on and he dished on both projects for the first time, which you can read below in an excerpt from the outlet's French interview translated by Google.
"I have two horror film projects with Victor Hadida. I am working on the adaptation of the video game Project Zero. The film will take place in Japan. I especially don't want to uproot the game from its Japanese haunted house setting. And we're also working on a new Silent Hill. The project will always be anchored in this atmosphere of a small American town, ravaged by Puritanism. I think it's time to make a new one."
The original Silent Hill scored just a 31% at the box office according to critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Movie-goers liked it more, giving it more than twice the average at 63% favorability. The movie reworks the plot of the original 1999 game and uses the original score by Akira Yamaoka which helped capture the signature atmosphere despite some messy writing. The sequel, Silent Hill Revelation, released in 3D in 2012 to lower scores, being enjoyed by just 10% of critics and only 35% of viewers.
Fatal Frame, meanwhile, received one Japanese film adaptation in 2014, though it was based on a novelization of the games, so it took a less direct route from game to theaters. The film didn't draw much attention in the west, though Kotaku's Richard Eisenbeis called it "an atmospheric masterpiece."
There are currently no other project details to share on either project but we'll track them with curiosity.
