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French director Christophe Gans proved he understands the horror genre with the hit film, Brotherhood of the Wolf. Now he's putting his love of videogames to the test with his adaptation of Konami's Silent Hill game for the big screen.

Unlike many of the directors responsible for bringing videogames to the big screen in Hollywood, Gans is a die-hard gamer that respects the source material. From the get-go, the director, along with screenwriter Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction), decided to make this movie for the gamers, rather than take the Hollywood approach of fitting the game into a particular film genre and expanding the potential audience to make everyone happy.

Silent Hill certainly has an international flavor. The game was created in Japan by Konami, and the film's screenplay was written in Paris by Gans and Avary. The film was shot and edited in Toronto, where Gans is still holed up working on the DVD cut and TV versions of the film. The director took a break from his work to talk to GamePro, his favorite magazine (no, really, it is), about Silent Hill, videogames and Hollywood convergence.

How long have you been playing games?

CG I've been playing games since 1993 on PlayStation One with Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. I was a director and was interested in games. I played very intensely and I started to figure how to invite this language into film. It started as I thought about how do you converge the cinema and videogame language, but it was not about one game in particular. And then I played Silent Hill. It was six years ago. I remember I bought the game and when I started to play it I was astonished by the game's amazing atmosphere and the interesting characters and the back story. It was the first game with the structure of a movie. So we decided to go after the rights. Very quickly I became a collector of games, not just American games but Japanese imports on PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast.

Have you upgraded to Xbox 360 yet?

CG No. I've been immersed in this movie, but I'm going to buy an Xbox 360 when I finish working on the film here. People have been telling me that the new Tomb Raider: Legend is amazing on that system, so I'm really looking forward to it.

How did you adapt Silent Hill for the big screen?

CG We tried to figure out how to adapt a game. Adapting a game is not like adapting a book. It's like adapting a journey that you had in a foreign country--a virtual place. You spend days and nights playing in that country. I think for me it's more about adapting our collective memory of experiencing that game. It's not like a story-telling thing. And it's not just playing through again and seeing if some of the stereotypes of the game can be transported to the big screen. I think it's a matter of feeling. It's a matter of atmosphere. It's a very abstract process. All of the movies adapted from games just look like B-movies. They're just realities. With Silent Hill we tried to adapt something more like the game and a very strange, conceptual movie. I hope that we succeeded.

What was the process like in writing the script in Paris?

CG When we worked on the adaptation we were three guys, Roger Avery, Nicolas (A French director) and myself. We were three directors, screenwriters and gamers trying to adapt Silent Hill. I think the best way to do it. We compared our souvenirs, our memories of the time we spent in Silent Hill. We tried to find something collective. Each person that experiences a game has a different way to remember it. We had to find something that was collective--certain moments from the game. Sometimes you remember the color of the wall or a very specific camera movement in a dark alley. It's done with little subtle details. That's what we tried to focus on when doing the film.

Which game did you focus on for this film?

CG Originally we wanted to focus on Silent Hill 2. We agreed that that was the best in the series. But then we realized that that was impossible because you have to explain why the town becomes that town. We had to adapt the first one. We had to tell the story of Alyssa, the little girl who has been brought here and has created this strange town into her mind. We did it. We decided sometimes exactly to reproduce sequences that were in the game and.sometimes we surprise the gamer to tell the story in a different way than in the first game. It's about Alyssa and how the town was created in her head.

When we decided to go back to the first story, we realized Silent Hill was not just a background. The town was not just a background. It's like a Twilight Zone. The second story happened in a town that's named Silent Hill. It's a beautiful love story about a guy looking for his dead wife. We decided it was more interesting to tell the story of the town. And when we decided to do that, it's not just the story of Alyssa. It was also the story of a town founded three centuries ago by witch hunters. That was also about the first witch burning. It was an epic. It was a big story. We decided to not try to tell all of the story in one film and leave door open for the sequel.

What would you do with a sequel?

CG If the first film is successful, we'll continue to tell the story. We all have different ways to do sequels. Roger would love to go back and tell the second story and leave the town as a background. But as a director, I'd love to tell what happened to this character after the first movie ends.

What was the biggest challenge with this film?

CG With Silent Hill, people say you can't reproduce the pacing of the game. I don't agree. Silent Hill is not about the gameplay. It's about the way you work with your imagination of the gamer. It's very possible to write that kind of a message into a film. I don't think the gamer wants to go to the theater and have the same experience they had when they held the controller in their hands. I think that's stupid. The audience just wants to have the same feeling. And there's plenty of moments of feeling when you play Doom.

I remember years ago when I played Doom. When you arrive on that large planet and there's a black sky and there's a huge monster screaming in the night and running towards you. That's the experience of Doom. It's not running down a corridor and shooting at f**king zombies. It's a matter of space and of sound and a feeling of loneliness. It's the same with Tomb Raider because I like to be in these underground huge caves. It's not intelligent, that's a different feeling. And that's what I wanted to see on the big screen. The problem is that people think that the gamer just wants the speed and the effects. It's very formulaic. They're cutting out all the interesting aspects and all the edgy aspects of the game to cater to a younger audience.

Will there be any crossover between your film and new Silent Hill games?

CG They asked to use a new monster we created for the movie called the janitor in the new game. I was very proud of that. It's like an honor for me. Basically I'm a fan of the game. I spent so many hours and days and nights into Silent Hill that to me when I met him it was like wow, he's like a rock star. I was very proud when they asked me to use some of the things I created for the game. It was like being a cousin of the family.

Why have videogame movies no really worked on the big screen thus far?

CG When I saw the Resident Evil movies--I'm sure the people who did these two films played the game, but the problem is that if you want to know why Resident Evil is a good game, you have to play all the other survival horror games. When you see the film you only see a zombie movie.

The true originality of the Resident Evil game is not the zombies, it's something different. That's what's so disappointing from the adaptations I've seen from Hollywood. Hollywood is trying to see into this game what was a formula and not what was the true originality. As a gamer, I didn't like any of these adaptations and I was there in the theater on the first day of each release. I was there watching Doom with the other gamers. And the feeling in the theater was a collective disappointment.

Are there other games that you'd like to see brought to the big screen?

CG I think there are a big number of games that could be great movies. Everyone is thinking of course of Metal Gear Solid. The original one on PlayStation One has beautiful characters and is beautifully written. I really think that Hideo Kojima doesn't need a Hollywood director because he's a director himself. He's super talented and his way to make a game is so absolutely cinematic why would he need a Hollywood director? I would love to see a Metal Gear movie directed by Kojima with the kind of ideas that he has.

What are your thoughts on Uwe Boll?

CG Uwe Boll is a separate planet by himself. This guy is using a system of financing in Germany and he found a good idea: buying cheap game licenses and he's basically a sausage maker. He's doing movies like someone's doing sausage. He actually has a good idea. And he's a pretty nice guy. It's just he's hated by all the gamers.

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