Director Zach Cregger's Resident Evil reboot is setting the early-fall box office on fire and setting all kinds of franchise and genre records.
The video game adaptation's success has opened the doors to all kinds of possibilities, and it seems one of them will be a new take on Silent Hill.
Roy Lee, who was a producer on Resident Evil, is reportedly spearheading a similar reboot of Konami's flagship horror title according to the Wall Street Journal.
Capcom launched Resident Evil back in '96, leaning heavily into survival action, bio-weapons, and flesh-eating zombies.
Konami took a total left turn three years later with Silent Hill, trading jump scares for pure psychological dread, surreal atmosphere, and deep-seated town lore.
Now that producer Roy Lee is tied to the upcoming Silent Hill reboot, it’ll be interesting to see what takeaways from the RE film revamp make their way into Konami's world. One of them obviously has to be the right selection of the person as the creative lead.
While they were working on Barbarian, Lee offhandedly asked Cregger what video game he'd adapt if he ever got the chance. Cregger didn't hesitate and instantly named Resident Evil. Taking the hint, Lee surprised Cregger by actually going out and bagging the film rights just for him.
There have been three Silent Hill feature films released or produced to date, starting with 2006's Silent Hill, the direct sequel 2012's Silent Hill: Revelation, and the more recent Return to Silent Hill, which was released earlier this year in January.
All three films suffered from poor critic and general audience perception, but they all managed to double their modest production budgets, thanks to strong international interest.
With Lee's involvement, there is some online fan speculation that Creeger could follow him over to Silent Hill but that seems unlikely given the rough backlash he got from hardcore RE fans for leaving out key game characters. It's hard to imagine him jumping straight back into another notoriously hyper-critical fandom and Cregger's next feature film will reportedly be the sci-fi space film, The Flood.
There's also the question of what's next for Lee, who also has several other video game adaptations in the works, including a Battlefield movie with Michael B. Jordan, Amazon's God of War series- which recently replaced Ryan Hurst with David Bautista, as well as BioShock and Horizon Zero Dawn projects.