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Monster Hunter Adaptation Casts Milla Jovovich, Sets Filming Start
The Monster Hunter movie adaptation has nailed down a production start date and a leading actress. The film is based on the Capcom video game franchise of the same name which has achieved worldwide acclaim and success since its 2004 PlayStation 2 debut. Since then, there have been five installments in the main Monster Hunter series, the most recent being Monster Hunter World, as well as a number of spinoffs for handheld, online and mobile beast hunting sessions.
Due to the success of the Monster Hunter games, particularly in Japan, the franchise has branched out into other media which includes a manga, an anime series and a trading card game, and the property is also set for the full Hollywood movie adaptation treatment. Talk of a Monster Hunter movie began as early as 2012, with Resident Evil director Paul W. S. Anderson attached to direct. The project went relatively quiet until 2016 when Capcom announced development had begun on the movie, with Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt obtaining the rights. Constantin Films is producing the movie.
It is now being reported by Variety that Monster Hunter has cast Resident Evil star Milla Jovovich in a leading role and will begin production in September with a $60 million budget. Monster Hunter is set to film in Cape Town, South Africa, the same location used for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and will feature special effects from Technicolor's Mr. X, the company who also worked on, you guessed it, Resident Evil. Previous reports suggested that the plot would involve a parallel "Monster Hunter" world bleeding over into the "real" world.
While it isn't at all unusual for directors to work with the same people for multiple projects -Tim Burton and Johnny Depp made careers out of it, after all - it does certainly feel like Constantin are attempting to directly replicate their Resident Evil success with Monster Hunter. The fact that both are Constantin-made movies based on Capcom video games, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, produced by Jeremy Bolt and starring Milla Jovovich indicates that Monster Hunter is taking the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy to an entirely new level.
However, many would undoubtedly argue that the Resident Evil films were very much broke. Although the franchise was largely a financial success and the first movie is often considered one of the better examples of a video game-to-movie adaptation, the Resident Evil franchise attracted mostly negative reviews throughout its six-film run. Monster Hunter fans perhaps won't be too delighted to learn that more or less the exact same team will be taking a shot at their beloved world of Wyverns and weapon crafting in the near future.
