Resident Evil Director Adapting George R.R. Martin Short Story With Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista

Resident Evil and Monster Hunter filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson is moving forward with a new fantasy film, as he’s developing an adaptation of George R.R. Martin‘s In the Lost Lands short story, which is set to star Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista. Anderson and Jovovich have been developing the project for years, with the story being one of the only remaining projects from the author that hadn’t been purchased in the wake of Martin’s Game of Thrones on HBO becoming such a massive success. It’s unknown what this means for the Monster Hunter franchise, with Anderson previously detailing that he hoped to develop the video game adaptation into his next major film franchise.

Deadline describes that the new film “will follow a queen, desperate to obtain the gift of shapeshifting, who makes a daring play: she hires the sorceress Gray Alys (Jovovich), a woman as feared as she is powerful. Sent to the ghostly wilderness of the ‘Lost Lands’, Alys and her guide, the drifter Boyce (Bautista), must outwit and outfight man and demon in a fable that explores the nature of good and evil, debt and fulfillment, love, and loss.”

Jovovich herself previously shared her excitement about the project while promoting Monster Hunter.

“There’s a short story by George R.R. Martin called ‘In the Lost Lands’ that I had found and it was a project that I was supposed to do a few years ago and then it all fell apart, but I kept in contact with the writer who had developed the script and owned the property,” Jovovich shared with ComicBook.com. “I brought it to Paul’s attention, and I said, ‘Listen, this is such a great story, and I just love it so much. I wonder, could we produce this together? Could we do something together for it?’ I wasn’t, to be honest, even thinking about directing it. I just thought maybe he could help us develop it, and he loved the idea. We’ve been developing this script for, I guess, it’s going on the last four years now, so it’s definitely been a passion project of ours, and we’ll see if we can get it done next year or not, but it’s something we’d like to do together.”

She added, “What’s amazing, it’s literally the last few of his stories that were available that my friend got the rights to before Game of Thrones became a thing. And then all of his stories got bought up, but he had the rights to these few short stories. So we were really lucky to get them.”

Stay tuned for details on In the Lost Lands.

Are you looking forward to the new project? Let us know in the comments below!