Return to Silent Hill: Christophe Gans movie has secured funding, begins filming soon

We’ve been hearing for a few years now that Brotherhood of the Wolf and Silent Hill director Christophe Gans has been working with producer Victor Hadida to develop a new Silent Hill movie that would be “totally independent from the two previous movies”. Gans directed the 2006 version of Silent Hill from a screenplay he wrote with Roger Avary and Nicolas Boukhrief, and will be directing this new film – which is titled Return to Silent Hill – from a screenplay he has written with Sandra Vo-Anh and Will Schneider… and now Deadline has reported that the project has secured funding! Filming is expected to begin soon.

The Return to Silent Hill news was included in a report that Ashland Hill Media Finance has agreed to co-finance a slate of four films at various stages of production. Return to Silent Hill is one of those films. The others are an action movie called Chief of Station; Skyline Radial, the fourth entry in the Skyline franchise; and the animated film Sneaks.

Return to Silent Hill is being produced by Hadida and Molly Hassell. A company called The Veterans is handling the international sales.

The new film is based on the story of the video game Silent Hill 2, and Gans has said that it will follow “a young guy coming back to Silent Hill, where he has known a great love and what he’s going to find is a pure nightmare.” Gans has also said that Return to Silent Hill “respects the way Silent Hill has evolved. Most of the time, these are stand-alone stories. Silent Hill is a bit like The Twilight Zone, the fourth dimension, a place where anything and everything can happen. I worked on a new Silent Hill which is a Silent Hill of the year 2023 – because the film would be released next year – and not a Silent Hill as I imagined it in 2006. It is a Silent Hill for today’s audiences while being ultra respectful of the saga. I’m aware that Silent Hill is a very big video game franchise, and a work of art in the noble sense of the word. The people who thought up Silent Hill put a lot of their guts into it. If I know them well, they are people of great integrity. For me, it was important to design a Silent Hill for today’s audience. It’s clear that today’s horror movies don’t look like the horror movies of 2006, and so much the better. Not that the horror films of 2007 weren’t good, but every genre goes through an evolution. I’m trying to take into account what I’ve seen recently, what’s most original and amazing in horror films, and see if Silent Hill has the seeds, or even the expression of that. Silent Hill has always been an unusual game and ahead of its time.“

Are you glad to hear that Christophe Gans’ Return to Silent Hill is moving ahead and will be filming soon? Let us know by leaving a comment below.