Despite the death threats he faced when first deciding to bring Konami’s horror franchise to the big screen, director of the third Silent Hill movie, Return to Silent Hill, would be open to adapting a further game for the big screen.
In an interview with Variety, director Christophe Gans said that whilst critics panned 2006’s Silent Hill adaptation, “the reputation of the movie has grown”, giving him a new audience in the “2.0 generation of Silent Hill lovers” that he hopes to tap into for this new adaptation of Silent Hill 2.
“If I have the opportunity, we’ll come back to Silent Hill once more,” he said. “I’m not looking at Silent Hill only as a great video game. I’m looking at it as a piece of modern art. It has something really edgy and experimental. I will adapt another chapter because there are some that are extremely good, something very different from the first film, and now Return to Silent Hill. I like this world, and I can see that plenty of people are thinking I’m doing a pretty good job.”
Gans also revealed that when he announced interest in adapting the series for 2006’s Silent Hill, he received “plenty” of death threats.
“It was a big challenge to adapt correctly and respectfully a game which is considered a classic,” Gans added. “We know that the people who love video games are very passionate. I remember when I did the first film, I received plenty of death threats. People were saying, ‘If you mess up this one, we are going to find you.’ So I came onto the first film with great responsibility, and certainly even more with the second one. At the same time, it was important for me to imagine a movie that people who are not playing games can be interested in.”
Return to Silent Hill is part of a resurgence of Konami’s horror franchise, following the success of Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake and last year’s Silent Hill f. Unfortunately, it’s not faring much better than its panned predecessor, Silent Hill Revelation: at the time of writing, it’s sitting at 31 on Metacritic (and a 4.4 user score), and 15 on Rotten Tomatoes (30% user score). Admittedly, it’s only the end of January, but that makes it the worst-reviewed movie of the year to date on both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and one of the worst released over the last 12 months.
By comparison, Silent Hill: Revelation has a Metacritic score of 16 (4.5 from users).
