Resident Evil movie makers set sights on Monster Hunter

The people behind the Resident Evil movies are making a Monster Hunter movie next.

With Resident Evil: The Final Chapter near release, writer-director Paul W.S Anderson's film series based on the Capcom horror series is coming to an end. But his affiliation with Capcom is set to continue.

In an interview with Deadline, Anderson confirmed he will tackle Capcom's phenomenally successful action series Monster Hunter next. Anderson has written the first film's script and has created still and VFX visual renderings of the creatures. Deadline published an image of a dragon tearing up LAX. Deadline reports the budget for the Monster Movie will be in the $50m-plus range - similar to the Resident Evil films. The plan is for the Monster Hunter films to be a long-running series, as the Resident Evil films turned out to be.

Here's the blurb, as outlined by Deadline:

And here's Anderson on the Monster Hunter film:

"What I love about Monster Hunter is the incredibly beautiful, immersive world they've created. It's on the level of like a Star Wars movie, in terms of world creation. There are no real central characters so it's a bit like when we first approached Resident Evil and imposed our own characters and story on that world. I think this is a perfect IP for us to do exactly that same thing again.

"The Monster Hunter world includes these huge deserts that make the Gobi Desert look like a sandbox, and they have ships that sail through the sand. These full-on galleons, but rather than sailing on the ocean waves, they sail through waves of sand.

"You're fighting these giant creatures, some as big as a city block. They live underneath the Earth and when they burst out, it's like the best of Dune. You also have these flying dragons, giant spiders, the most wonderful creatures. That's what really attracted me.

"I felt there was a fresh, exciting world that we could expose and build a whole world around, like a Marvel or Star Wars universe. Everything is about world creation, nowadays, and how can you build a world where you can have multiple stories going on? I thought this was our opportunity to have a cinematic universe."

Anderson continued:

"The central characters are very relatable American characters. You take a person from the ordinary world who thinks they're in a dead end job, they have no future, they feel like their life's a failure, it's going nowhere, like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. It's about a normal American who gets dragged into this parallel world, this Monster Hunter world. Then eventually the parallel world ends up coming to our world. So you have the creatures from the Monster Hunter world invading our world.

"The mythology is that basically monsters are real and all the monsters and creatures from our mythology, whether dragons or the Minotaur, or Chinese dragons, it's all real. They were real. They really existed in our world. For every monster there was a hero that fought the monster. And then those monsters just disappeared, overnight. They ceased to exist, as did our need for heroes. They became a thing of myth and legend, but eventually the monsters will come back. Unless we have a hero to help fight them, our world with be devastated by these returning creatures, after we've chosen to put our faith in technology rather than heroes. All of our technology won't mean anything once the dragons start raining fire."

Anderson said he's got about two movies already sorted in his mind, with shooting in China or South Africa likely.

"It's definitely intended to be a franchise because the movie starts in our world and then it goes to the Monster Hunter world and then the final act comes back to our world and it's basically this epic battle in and around LAX.

"Then at the end we're suddenly confronted with the fact that the mythological creatures of our world have come back to wreak vengeance. So we definitely have the second film where that would be planned out."

Unlike most video game movie news, this one feels like it will actually lead to something. Anderson's work on the Resident Evil films has shown he can turn a Capcom franchise into a successful movie series - but can he repeat the trick with Monster Hunter?