A new Silent Hill project is taking shape, though for now it exists mostly as a name attached to a producer. According to a Wall Street Journal profile, Roy Lee has begun developing a new take on the video game horror franchise. Whether it is a film, a series or something else entirely has not been specified, and no studio, writer or director has been attached.
Lee’s credentials in this space run through some of the genre’s most durable horror IP, including The Ring, The Grudge and It, and this year’s Resident Evil reboot, which opened to more than $100 million worldwide under his and Zach Cregger‘s stewardship. That track record is likely the whole reason this news is worth reporting at all: a producer with Lee’s hit rate circling a franchise tends to make studios take notice, even at the earliest and vaguest stage of development.
Silent Hill has had an uneven relationship with film adaptation. Christophe Gans‘s 2006 original earned a loyal following despite mixed reviews, and a sequel, Silent Hill: Revelation, arrived to considerably less affection in 2012. Gans returned to the material this year with Return to Silent Hill, which opened to a reported $3.2 million domestically against a $23 million budget. A new project entering development eight months later suggests confidence in the franchise’s underlying pull rather than in that film’s specific execution, though Rue Morgue has not independently confirmed the reasoning behind the timing.
Given how little is officially known, all of this should be read as early and unconfirmed. No release window, cast or format exists to report, and plenty of “in development” horror properties never make it past this stage. Still, for a franchise this beloved and this frequently mishandled onscreen, any credible attachment is enough to get attention.
