Roger Avary climbs to the top of SILENT HILL

Script is already done for big-screen Konami adaptation

By Patrick Sauriol     October 15, 2004

Roger Avary has been working on the movie adaptation of Konami's SILENT HILL videogame for director Christophe Gans (BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) for just a few weeks, and it's already done? Well, almost...

As the Oscar-winning screenwriter (for PULP FICTION, with Quentin Tarantino) notes on his web site, when he arrived in Paris he was given "a highly detailed treatment [that] had been in the works for over a month by Christophe Gans and Nicholas Boukhrief." Then it was up to Avary to start typing. "I spent three intensive weeks with Christophe, rewriting the treatment to perfection, and then Nicholas did another pass on it. Then, I sat down and over the next three weeks put together the first draft. Now, although we have something that resembles a finished script, with dialog and formatting and little details worked out -- it's still technically a pre-draft. I spent today with Christophe taking character notes -- examining what doesn't work. And there's plenty."

Avary notes that the script, like all scripts, is just a blueprint, and "blueprints tend to change along the way. The reason we wrote this FAST is because it's a GO MOVIE. Christophe and his production team desperately need something to begin the boarding and budgeting process. They need to plan for the massive special effects in the film. They need to begin all of the preproduction that goes into making a movie -- they begin shooting in February, after all." Avary is off to his "orange farm and cats" to continue work on the script, and it's all good. As he reminds readers at the end of his journal entry, "So everybody relax. We're making a movie here, not just a script." That sounds pretty good to us.

You can read all of Avary's diary entries about writing SILENT HILL, life in Paris, and Milla Jovovich's Yosemite Sam impersonation at his web site. Then you'll see why Avary says, "This has been the most fun I've had writing a script since...I don't know when."


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