The RESIDENT EVIL movie franchise may have come to a close (at least until the reboot arrives), but Paul W.S. Anderson is already gearing up to shoot the first installment of his next big franchise, an adaptation of Capcom's Monster Hunter video-game series. Here's the old logline for MONSTER HUNTER: "For every Monster, there is a Hero. An ordinary man in a dead end job discovers that he is actually the descendant of an ancient hero. He must travel to a mystical world to train to become a Monster Hunter, before the mythical creatures from that world destroy ours." The director has already cast Milla Jovovich to star in the film as a character named Artemis, and now THR has reported that Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy), T.I. Harris (ANT-MAN AND THE WASP), and Tony Jaa (FURIOUS 7) have joined up as well.
Tony Jaa is said to be playing MONSTER HUNTER's male lead, a man known as The Hunter, with T.I. Harris playing Link, a sniper, and Ron Perlman playing Admiral, the leader of the Hunter's crew. Production on MONSTER HUNTER is set to begin next month in South Africa. Paul W.S. Anderson spoke about the project to Deadline nearly two years ago, saying that he finds the world of MONSTER HUNTER to be on the same level as STAR WARS.
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.
The director added that he was also pumped to bring the giant creatures of the video-game series to life. "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," Anderson said. "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."