German filmmaker Uwe Boll – the man responsible for a small army of piss-poor videogame to big-screen adaptations – has retired from film-making.
Speaking to Metro, he sagely declared that the ‘market is dead’ – not just for videogame films, but across the entire industry. Okay then.
The man behind such gems as House of the Dead, Postal, Bloodrayne, and Alone in the Dark went on to reveal he just doesn’t have the cash to offend us with his tat anymore.
He explained:
You don’t make any money anymore on movies because the DVD and Blu-ray market worldwide has dropped 80 percent in the last three years. That is the real reason; I just cannot afford to make movies.
Boll continued, suggesting that he simply can’t return to ‘student film-making’, and refuses to compromise by making cheaper movies at this stage in his career.
Strong words from a man responsible for moments of movie magic such as the below scene:
Unsurprisingly, the director has been funding his own projects since 2005. He actually launched a Kickstarter in 2015 for a third Rampage movie called No Mercy.
No Mercy failed to reach its funding goal, prompting dear old Mr Boll to upload a video to YouTube in which he requested we all go fuck ourselves.
Brilliantly, Boll hopes that now he’s stepped away from the movie-making game, his films will be examined in a new light and finally hailed for the great works that they are.
He said:
They will see they were a lot of very interesting movies and a lot of movies that I think made sense and said a point about things. They deserve to be discussed bigger than they were.
With Boll finally moving on, and presumably lifting the curse of shit videogame films, perhaps upcoming projects like Assassin’s Creed and Tomb Raider actually stand a chance.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.