After a decade or so lost in the fog, the Silent Hill franchise seems about to re-emerge in a big way. A live stream from Konami overnight revealed that three new games are in the works – two all-new ones and a PC and PS5 remake of Silent Hill 2 – and a new movie, Return To Silent Hill, is also underway, to be directed by Christophe Gans, who also helmed the 2006 adaptation.
Silent Hill was Gans’ third feature, following the anime adaptation Crying Freeman and the historical epic Brotherhood Of The Wolf. A genuine and knowledgeable fan of the Silent Hill franchise, the film version was a dream project for him and a labour of love, successfully translating the games’ extraordinary visuals and palpable sense of absolute dread to the big screen. The story was unavoidably convoluted, but the mystery of the empty town where it snows ash, the reality-shifts, and the nightmarish creatures made for one of the better examples of a game to-film-translation.
In a Silent Hill transmission streamed on Youtube by Konami last night, Gans says that his Return To Silent Hill will adapt the second game, which is “the best of these stories, [about] a guy coming back to Silent Hill, where he has known a great love. What he’s going to find is a pure nightmare.” Producer Samuel Hadida likens it to the myth of Orpheus: whether a man can go deep into Hell to bring back the soul of the person he loved the most in his life.
“In the first Silent Hill we were exploring a world,” Gans continues. “But in the second game, the creators changed the rules. We were now looking at this strange world from the point of view of the hero we were playing, so [Return To Silent Hill will be] much more about psychological horror, even if we are going to find again all the same creatures and the same strange terror sequences. The first big question and the first big terror is about ourselves. Are we mad?!”
He goes on to say that he’s continuing to approach the franchise from a fan perspective and with the maximum of respect, which is why the first film worked as well as it did. But he also says that it’s important to bring surprise to the project, and that he’s working – with full backing of Konami – on some major redesigns, including to the series’ iconic monster, Red Pyramid. “We have to be aware that everything has changed in 15 years,” Gans says. “Everything has been washed away. We have to bring back something very surprising.”
Aside from the film and the remake, the other two game titles were revealed as Townfall (which has the involvement of Annapurna Interactive) and Silent Hill F, which will take place in Japan. There are teasers for both, but neither gives much away. The big franchise relaunch is currently in its early stages, so it’s not quite clear yet when any of it will arrive, Expect more information over the next year or two.
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