Ron Perlman of Hellboy fame has been cast in the movie adaptation of the hit video game series Monster Hunter.
THR reports that he will also be joining hip-hop artist T.I. Harris (Ant-Man and the Wasp) and previously announced Milla Jovovich. Perlman will be portraying a character simply named Admiral while Harris will play a sniper named Link. Monster Hunter is being written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. The husband and wife duo of Anderson and Jovovich previously collaborated on the Resident Evil movie franchise.
Plot details have not been unveiled yet, but the movie will focus on Jovovich’s character, Artemis. The game series tasks players with tracking and hunting various monsters in order to accrue more powerful gear and take down bigger beasts. Monster Hunter World released this year on current gen consoles to huge success, shattering developer Capcom’s expectations and it recently received a PC port. Having shipped over 50 million units, the series has grown a huge fan base and has spawned books, anime, and a manga.
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Monster Hunter is being brought to the big screen by Screen Gems and begins shooting next month in South Africa with a reported budget of $60 million.
“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,” said Anderson after the project was announced. “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.”
Anderson and Jovovich’s Resident Evil series earned over $1.2 billion across six movies and ten years. While not all movies were met with positive criticism, the box office numbers seem to have inspired Screen Gems to try to repeat that financial success.
