Isabela Merced is set to star in and executive produce a new live-action adaptation of Sega’s The House of the Dead, with Resident Evil filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson writing and directing the movie.
According to Deadline’s exclusive reporting, the project is being introduced to buyers around the European Film Market, meaning that it has moved past the phase of being in pre-production.
Isabela Merced has starred in numerous high-profile projects lately. She recently appeared as Dina in HBO’s The Last of Us, playing the role of Ellie’s girlfriend from Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II. She also played Hawkgirl in Superman and took a major role in Alien: Romulus.
On the production side, Anderson is producing alongside his longtime partner Jeremy Bolt, with Sega producer Toru Nakahara and Story Kitchen also producing. Paul W.S. Anderson may be well known to horror video game fans through his Resident Evil and Monster Hunter movie adaptations. The director wants this movie to be more on the horror side rather than the action-packed blockbusters his previous video game portrayals were.
Story-wise, the film is expected to portray the events of The House of the Dead 3, the 2002 entry that follows protagonist Lisa Rogan as she searches for her missing father amid a new outbreak. The House of the Dead has already been adapted once before, most notably by the German director Uwe Boll.
This has been quite an active couple of weeks for Hollywood adaptations. Just a couple of days ago, it was announced that HBO and Craig Mazin are tackling Baldur’s Gate 3 as their new project, and famous fantasy author Brandon Sanderson penned a contract with Apple to write and produce several Cosmere projects, chief among them being Mistborn movies and Stormlight Archive TV series.
