Paul W.S. Anderson on the blue screen technology of In the Lost Lands

Last Updated on March 14, 2025

Paul W.S. Anderson might not feel like the most obvious choice to adapt a George R.R. Martin story, but he says he has taken direct inspiration from the author’s source story in achieving the vision for In the Lost Lands. And yes, it involves a lot of blue screen.

Anderson recently chatted with Variety to discuss how he sought to achieve a vision that doesn’t only respect Martin but creates an environment that doesn’t rely on the author’s most famous work, the Game of Thrones series. “It entirely came out of George’s story, really. Reading it, the Lost Lands were sentient. It was like walking into the Overlook Hotel and going, ‘Oh, my God, it’s alive.’ It was a whole haunted landscape. That’s why I thought it was the correct approach. Although it’s set in the future, society has really fallen back into a feudal state, which suggested to me period paintings. I wanted the movie to have a painterly look to it. It should look like the graphic novel that Hieronymus Bosch never wrote. I was also very aware that George has had a huge amount of success with ‘Game of Thrones’ and Westeros. I don’t want us to look like a Westeros Redux. I wanted a completely different look. I needed to just create it from scratch.”

Anderson also pointed out that by shooting in front of blue screens as opposed to fully immersive LED rooms, the budget was able to be brought down, having reduced the number of visual effects that had to be done within a certain timeline. “It’s certainly more cost-effective than shooting against a virtual wall. The problem with those is you’re stuck with what you shoot. If you don’t like it, then you have to turn it into a visual effect. Now you’re paying twice. You’re paying for the very expensive wall — because the studio rental is huge and you’re hoping that’s going to be justified by getting the image in-camera. But if the seam up between the wall and the floor isn’t correct, or if one of those LED cubes goes out and black cubes are floating in the background, or if the wall is too sharp and you can’t defocus it enough, then it becomes a visual effect anyway. You’re paying for the wall and the visual effect.”

Unfortunately for Anderson and the studio, all of these efforts haven’t paid off (read our 3/10 review here) and In the Lost Lands will never make back its budget (it has taken in just $1.4 million worldwide as of publication). But no doubt he will hope to rebound with his return to horror, an adaptation of video game series The House of the Dead, something previously tackled by Uwe Boll…