Barbarian director Zach Cregger is having a massive moment right now, with his Resident Evil reboot practically lighting the early-fall box office on fire and tearing through franchise records.
And one of the earliest believers in Cregger is hoping to bring similar success to another classic horror video game series.
It looks like Konami’s iconic Silent Hill is next up on the chopping block and according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, producer Roy Lee (who helped steer Resident Evil, and teamed with Cregger on Barbarian and Weapons) is now spearheading a similar big-screen reboot for the legendary psychological horror series.
Capcom launched Resident Evil back in '96, leaning heavily into survival action, bio-weapons, and flesh-eating zombies.
Konami took a total left turn three years later with Silent Hill, trading jump scares for pure psychological dread, surreal atmosphere, and deep-seated town lore.
Now that producer Roy Lee is attached to the upcoming Silent Hill reboot, all eyes are on how he'll handle Konami's flagship horror property, and step one is clearly finding the right creative voice to lead it.
While Lee and Cregger were working together on Barbarian, he casually asked Cregger what video game he'd adapt if given total freedom. Cregger didn't skip a beat and blurted out Resident Evil.
Taking the hint, Lee actually went behind the scenes, bagged the film rights, and started making plans with Cregger long before the duo started making waves.
There have been three Silent Hill feature films released or produced to date, starting with 2006's Silent Hill, the direct sequel 2012's Silent Hill: Revelation, and the more recent Return to Silent Hill, which was released earlier this year in January.
All three films suffered from poor critic and general audience perception, but they all managed to double their modest production budgets, thanks to strong international interest.
With Lee's involvement, there is some online fan speculation that Cregger could follow him over to Silent Hill but that seems unlikely given the rough backlash he got from hardcore RE fans for leaving out key game characters.
It's hard to imagine him jumping straight back into another notoriously hyper-critical fandom and Cregger's next feature film will reportedly be the sci-fi space film, The Flood.
There's also the question of what's next for Lee, who also has several other video game adaptations in the works, including a Battlefield movie with Michael B. Jordan, Amazon's God of War series- which recently replaced an injured Ryan Hurst with David Bautista, as well as BioShock and Horizon Zero Dawn projects.