Sony has released a pair of posters for its Monster Hunter video game movie starring Milla Jovovich and Tony Jaa. Far from being a stranger to the world of video game films, Jovovich famously played the super-heroine Alice in all six of the Resident Evil movies that released from 2002 to 2017. Her husband-filmmaker, Paul W.S. Anderson, similarly directed four of the six films in the zombie survival series and wrote the remaining two, in addition to lending his services as a producer. Of course, he’d already cut his teeth on a video game adaptation before that, back when he helmed the 1995 Mortal Kombat adaptation.
For their latest collaboration, Jovovich and Anderson are adapting Monster Hunter, a video game property that Capcom launched in 2004. As its title implies, the fantasy action series follows players as they hunt and slay monsters in different fantastical settings, bringing them face to face with all manner of dangerous creatures. The movie adaptation isn’t scheduled to arrive until September, but is kicking off its marketing this week with a pair of one-sheets (with a teaser trailer - possibly - soon to follow).
Both Jovovich and Jaa have received their own Monster Hunter movie posters, as you can see below. The former stars in the film as Lt. Artemis, the head of an elite United Nations military team who’re transpired through a portal into a new world populated by giant monsters. In an effort to find their way home, Artemis and her team eventually encounter and work alongside “The Hunter” (Jaa), a mysterious warrior possessing “unique skills” which have allowed him to survive this hostile landscape for some time.
Jovovich and Jaa are joined in the film’s cast by Ron Perlman (Hellboy), in addition to Diego Boneta (Terminator: Dark Fate), Meagan Good (Shazam!), and rapper T.I. Judging by the one-sheets, the Monster Hunter movie will be relatively more grounded aesthetically than the video games, but with one foot still firmly planted in fantasy. That’s more or less the impression fans had already gotten from the set photos Jovovich posted online during filming, showing Artemis and her squad dressed in standard military gear while also wielding weapons either lifted from or influenced by the games (like the one she’s holding on the poster). Between that and its plot involving soldiers traveling through a portal to a sparse, distant world, Monster Hunter appears to have as much in common with Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi movie Stargate as the video games it’s based upon.
Anderson’s Resident Evil movies weren’t exactly faithful to the original games either, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise if Monster Hunter followed suit in that respect. While they were never popular with critics, Anderson and Jovovich’s Resident Evil films definitely had a loyal fanbase who enjoyed their blend of stylized monster fight scenes and goofy-fun (if otherwise nonsensical) mythology. One imagines the Monster Hunter movie will deliver more or less the same thing and could potentially kick off another franchise for the pair in the process when it arrives at the tail-end of summer.
Source: Sony
