With the Monster Hunter movie due to release in September, director and screenwriter Paul W.S. Anderson revealed more details about the film to Empire. As it turns out, the character played by his wife Milla Jovovich (the protagonist of this Monster Hunter movie adaptation) will be equipped with dual blades because she really enjoyed using those in the game.
Anderson: I wrote the role of Artemis for Milla as the avatar for the player, so she could be a grounded, relatable real-world character who is fresh to the world of Monster Hunter.
Jovovich: Yeah, she’s not based on a character from the game. Paul wrote her as the captain of a team of Army Rangers that go in to rescue their colleagues.
Anderson: Although Milla’s character’s not specifically in the game, she chose the same armour and weapons she uses in the game, so there were aspects of her game character that got folded into the movie representation.
Jovovich: I experimented with different weapons during the game and was able to kill more monsters with those blades. I thought they’d look really beautiful in an action sequence.
When mentioning 'the game', it's pretty clear the two are referencing Monster Hunter World, which proved to be an incredible success for Japanese developer and publisher CAPCOM. The game has surpassed 15 million units sold, with an additional 4+ million units sold by its expansion, Iceborne, making it by far the best-selling title ever released by CAPCOM, way ahead of Resident Evil 5 (7.5 million units sold).
This is the second time Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich are bringing a major CAPCOM IP to the big screen, after the series of Resident Evil movies that ended with 2016's The Final Chapter. While those films were financially successful, we're hoping the Monster Hunter movie adaptation will turn out to be more interesting and well-received than the Resident Evil film saga ever was.
