The House of the Dead: Paul W.S. Anderson to write and direct movie based on Sega video game

Another popular Sega video game is getting the live-action treatment. Per Deadline, Paul W.S. Anderson will write and direct The House of the Dead, an action horror movie based on the video game franchise.

Released in 1996, The House of the Dead is a first-person on-rails shooting game. In the series, players serve as AMS agents, a government agency tasked with eliminating biologically engineered undead creatures, aka zombies. Anderson has experience in bringing video games to the big screen, including Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, and Monster Hunter. Anderson already knows which of the six games he plans to adapt.

“We’re going to base the movie on House of the Dead 3, and if you know the mythology, that is all about family conflict amidst the action and scares,” Anderson told Deadline. “It’s about a woman, Lisa Rogan, who’s attempting to rescue her father. And it’s also about Daniel Curien, who’s the son of the man who caused this mutant outbreak in the first place and who has to deal with the sins of the father.”

EXCLUSIVE: Paul W.S. Anderson will write and direct ‘The House Of The Dead,’ an action-packed feature based on the legacy SEGA franchise.

All the details we know here: https://t.co/gmzBkbNnBB pic.twitter.com/d5EtGbPFN3

— Deadline (@DEADLINE) October 31, 2024

Along with Resident Evil, The House of the Dead inspired the zombie movie revival in the late 1990s that carried into the 2000s. Unlike the slow creatures in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, The House of the Dead featured zombies who could run. This groundbreaking change influenced popular zombie movies like 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, and World War Z. Anderson’s movie will also feature fast-moving zombies.

Anderson, Jeremy Bolt, Toru Nakahara, Dmitri M. Johnson, Mike Goldberg, and Dan Jevons will produce The House of the Dead. Timothy I. Stevenson will serve as an executive producer.

Anderson and the creative team will pitch the movie to studios immediately. Production is estimated to begin in the back half of 2025.