Boll Keeps Rolling

For the past year, if you went to UweBoll.com, you would only find a single sentence intended for an audience of one. The message: "Dear Dr. Boll, please stop making movies." The target recipient: German film director Uwe Boll.

The web site was recently taken down, but the "Dear Uwe" message speaks volumes about Boll’s burgeoning notoriety. The director has emerged as one of 2005’s most talked-about directors, but unfortunately for Boll, the topic of conversation has generally been his (alleged) staggering lack of talent. Dubbed by some as "The Ed Wood of the New Millennium," Boll is riding the wave of his new love-him-or-hate-him popularity and lining up an ever-growing slate of upcoming films.

Though most American audiences were first introduced to Boll by his 2003 video game adaptation House of the Dead, the director actually helmed three earlier American features that never received a theatrical release - Sanctimony (2000), Blackwoods (2002), and Heart of America (2003). Despite its almost unanimous critical shunning, the low-budget House of the Dead, inspired by the zombie arcade-style first-person shooter, brought in a surprising $10 million domestic gross for Artisan Entertainment and reinvented Boll as one of Hollywood’s most active directors of video game-based motion pictures. Boll followed House of the Dead with his 2005 adaptation of Atari’s Alone in the Dark game, starring Christian Slater, Tara Reid, and Stephen Dorff. However, this time, Boll failed to break the box office bank for his distributor, Lion’s Gate Pictures. According to Box Office Mojo, Alone in the Dark had an estimated $20 million budget, but only grossed $6.4 million worldwide.

Nevertheless, after the release of Alone in the Dark, Boll continued to develop more and more video game features, and his popularity, particularly on the internet, began to grow exponentially. Video game fans have always been a vocal segment of online discourse, and many objected to Boll’s targeting of their beloved gamer properties. Websites such as Uwe Boll Sucks started springing up and Quint, one of the major contributors to Harry Knowles’ Ain’t It Cool News, quickly gained fame for his expletive-laden rants about Dr. Boll. However, Boll seemingly revels in his newfound infamy (he recently invited Quint to a Texas screening and joyfully referred to the reporter as "My first enemy!" Earlier this year, after the Internet Movie Database incorrectly reported that Boll might direct the movie version of the best-selling Xbox game Halo, messageboards around the world lit up decrying the decision with an almost terrifying fervor.

But Boll has continued to ignore his critics and currently has two new video game features scheduled for a 2006 release - Bloodrayne (based on the Terminal Reality game) and Dungeon Siege (based on the Microsoft game). The Bloodrayne movie (scheduled for a January 6, 2006 release) is a prequel to the original game, set in eighteenth-century Romania, chronicling the battle between Rayne, a half-human/half-vampire warrior, and her father, Kagan, the King of Vampires. The cast includes Terminator 3’s Kristanna Loken, Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Michele Rodriguez, Meatloaf, Billy Zane, and Udo Kier. Boll recently told Scifi.com that the film had to be recut for the MPAA to get its R-rating, commenting that, "We will have the original version released shortly after on DVD, but we had to take out the parts where we were cutting people in half." There have been a few early screenings of Bloodrayne and the critical reaction seems consistent with Boll’s past efforts. Harry Knowles called it "a waste of time and talent and money," while Quint deemed Boll’s direction as "sub-substandard."

Dungeon Siege (which has recently been retitled In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale) represents Boll’s biggest project to date, with a production budget of an estimated $50 million. Boll told Coming Soon, "Dungeon Siege transcends the video game genre and appeals to mainstream entertainment audiences ... Based on the success of House of the Dead, I believe Dungeon Siege contains major crossover potential because of its unique blend of action and fantasy, on the order of Lord of the Rings." Boll’s cast for the fantasy epic includes Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies, Ray Liotta, Matthew Lillard, Burt Reynolds, Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani, and Kristanna Loken.

Though at a glance, Bloodrayne and Dungeon Siege seemingly represent bigger and better projects for Boll, there has been much speculation and some curious developments about the true commercial potential of both features. For instance, neither film, despite their multi-million budgets, has been picked up for American distribution by any Hollywood distributor. In an unusual move, actor Billy Zane (yes, the bad guy from Titanic) has actually formed a new independent distribution company, Romar Entertainment, to release Bloodrayne and Dungeon Siege in North America. In a press release, Zane commented that, "Romar is a form of self-distribution that invites productions to cover their P&A costs and get an incredible reach for their investment ... Everyone can win with this model, which gives more control and profits to the artists."

Then on October 27, Boll revealed that he was forming another new distribution company, Event Films, to release the 3-hour Dungeon Siege as two separate films, a la Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Boll told Coming Soon that the film was "a huge epic adventure, and to support the exhibitors who can't accept a movie so long, we decided to split the movie in half." However, not soon after, Boll reversed his decision, telling Sci Fi, "There were reports that we were going to release it in two parts because it is super long, but then I saw that King Kong is being released as a three-hour film, and we decided it was not going to be a problem to have a longer version."

In addition, some pundits are also wondering if recent changes in German tax law will hinder Boll’s ability to produce films. Boll manages a German tax-supported film fund called Boll KG, and many have claimed that the director purposely makes cheap, low quality movies that are expected to lose money, allowing his investors to claim the losses as a tax write-off. These theories paint Boll as a German version of the Max Bialystock character from Mel Brooks’ The Producers. In May, Variety reported that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder "wants to finance sharp cuts in corporate and inheritance taxes by closing tax loopholes, including the film funds." Though the issue is still being debated, some have argued that Boll could lose access to his film fund as soon as January 2006.

What’s next for Uwe Boll? He’s announced a wide slate of video game-related features, snapping up the rights to make movie versions of Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning, and Fear Effect. His next feature is an adaptation of Running with Scissors’ famously controversial game Postal. In a press release, Running with Scissors' CEO Vince Desi commented that, "Uwe Boll is the perfect producer-director to make Postal ... He understands the subject matter and has an appreciation and affinity for controversy and political incorrectness." Boll apparently agrees, stating in the same release, "I see [Postal] like a mirror for our society - funny, violent, absurd! ... So then the movie must be powerful, strange, and so full of the game's political incorrect outrageousness that if we do it correct, we will all probably end up in jail!"

Though Boll’s incarceration might not anger too many film or video game fans, you still have to marvel that a man who has developed such a vitriolic anti-fan base is still moving forward and carving out a career in the film industry, signing top-industry talent to his productions and continuing to make features. Expect Mel Brooks to announce his newest musical extravaganza, UWE!, any day now.