Movies
‘Silent Hill’ Sequel OFFICIAL! Shooting Next Year!
Some huge movies before I shut down for the evening, Columbia Pictures has finally officially announced a sequel to Silent Hill, which will begin production after the completion of Sony Screen Gems’ Resident Evil: Afterlife. Screenwriter Roger Avary and Samuel Hadida of Davis Films are returning. Read on for the skinny. No director has been named yet.
Roger Avary and Samuel Hadida of Davis Films are climbing back up “Silent Hill.”
The screenwriter and producer have signed on for a sequel to their 2006 video game adaptation.
The original, based on the Konami game, centered on a woman who travels to a desolate town to seek help for her ailing daughter only to find supernatural occurrences taking place there.
Davis Films aims to shoot the movie next year after “Resident Evil 4,” which it’s now prepping.
TriStar released the original “Silent Hill,” which earned $47 million domestically; the label has not confirmed involvement on the follow-up.
Avary, best known for his work on Quentin Tarantino scripts such as “Pulp Fiction,” also is penning video game adaptation “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” for Davis Films.
The deal is one of several projects for Hadida’s company. The French-based banner has come to Toronto with two projects — Michael Bassett’s “Solomon Kane” and the Terry Gilliam-helmed “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.”
“Kane,” based on Robert Howard’s early 20th-century pulp novels that blend fantasy and history, screened in the Cannes market in the spring, and Davis Films is hoping for new attention and offers at TIFF. The pic is set to play Wednesday in the Midnight Madness section.
“The cut is basically the same, but a lot of distributors wanted to see it with an audience, which could really affect how a film plays,” Hadida said.
Despite the lesser-known cast — James Purefoy, starring in the title role, is perhaps the best-known name — the filmmakers believe “Kane” could sell on the brand value of the Howard creation.
“The property is the star,” said Paul Berrow, who is producing with Hadida.
“Parnassus” will be released by Sony Pictures Classics following an involved postproduction process that included a stop at Cannes in May.
In addition to the “Resident Evil” franchise, Hadida counts movies such as “Good Night, and Good Luck” and “The Rules of Attraction” among his credits.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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