“It’s been a long trek to the big screen. To me it was a wonderful opportunity to make a quest movie, with a witch and a gunslinger going on an adventure together and falling in love along the way,” says writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson of In The Lost Lands, optioning George R.R. Martin short story in 2018.
Constantin Werner, a German producer and screenwriter, brought the story to Anderson, who had optioned three stories from George R.R. Martin even before “Game of Thrones” was made. “That was before George became the biggest thing on television,” Anderson offers. “All three stories are about love, but the George R.R. Martin version of love, a twisted form of love with unhappy endings.”
Of said three stories Anderson felt that In The Lost Lands was by far the strongest. It tells the story of a witch who is hired by a queen to go hunting for a werewolf. The filmmakers put their heads together and spent about three years developing a screenplay and then started on the production.
“What I really liked about the short story was just that – that it’s a twisted love story with a quite surprising ending,” Anderson says. It reminded him of movies he loved as a kid, especially spaghetti westerns of the sixties and seventies. “I love the stories of people being forced on an adventure together, even though they don’t trust each other, like for example in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly or Two Mules For Sister Sarah.”
Also, there from the start was the movie’s star, Milla Jovovich, who is married to Anderson and has quite some experience in the action genre, having starred in her husband Paul W.S. Anderson’s franchises like Resident Evil, Monster Hunter or The Three Musketeers. So, who better to tell what In The Lost Lands is about than Jovovich, who asserts herself as one of the great female action actors of our time as Gray Alys, the witch.
“In The Lost Lands is a very dark fairy tale, but it’s an action adventure as well. It’s like the Brothers Grimm meets sci-fi. We tell the story of a witch that hires a guy to take her to the Lost Lands to hunt down and kill a werewolf, to take possession of his magical skin,” says Jovovich.
Jovovich says the film is set in a unique landscape all of its own: “The Lost Lands, a wasteland that’s alive with magic and just takes people and drives them mad. It’s alive, really, full of these monsters and creatures that can get you and kill you. It’s a very dangerous place: If you go out into the Lost Lands, it’s very rare that people come back alive. I would describe it as very beautiful and stylized, a true fairy tale story at its heart.”
Also, it tells a love story. “Paul has given George R.R. Martin’s short story his own very special spin, turning this not very long book into a quite epic and grand action adventure like only he can do. It has all the elements you need to make a story like this work: very romantic imagery, beautiful dialogue, great character, but always told with the punch and the impact of a Paul Anderson movie. It’s a lot of fun.”
Jeremy Bolt, Anderson’s long-time producing and business partner, got involved early on as well. “His wife, the actor Milla Jovovich, had shown the script to him two years before that,” Bolt remembers. They both liked what Constantin Werner, the original writer, had made of the story, so Paul approached him, “and told him that he loved the idea of the project and that he would love to work with him on the script, work out its kinks, make it bigger and more cinematic.”
That’s when Anderson brought In The Lost Lands to Bolt and told him that he would love to make this movie. “It was something special, something he had never done before, based on a short story by George R.R. Martin no less,” Bolt remembers. “I was very confident we would be able to make the movie work and raise the budget. So, I took the project to our friends at Constantin Film, and they got on board. Next, we approached FilmNation, the sales company.”
Adapting the Short Story
As Bolt explained, to make In The Lost Lands into a feature film, a lot had to be added to the story. It was important to Paul W.S. Anderson to keep to the basics of the short story.
“First Gray Alys is hired by the Queen to go get the power to become a werewolf. Then she is hired by Jerais, who is the Queen’s protector, to fail the Queen. So, she’s given two separate quests, two separate wishes she has to grant. And she agrees to both of them, even though the two of them are mutually exclusive. “If she does one, how can she possibly do the other?” Anderson says. “That’s one of the great things about the movie because the audience have to ask themselves exactly that question: How is she going to achieve this?”
“In many ways Gray Alys is the human version of the monkey’s paw. It’s the basis of George’s short story, but it is a theme that goes back all the way to the Brothers Grimm, to the Bible. It’s a classic story, only now we have a completely fresh landscape and a completely fresh set of characters to tell that story,” Anderson adds.
“Alys is a witch, a mystical creature,” she says. “She has the ability to grant people their wishes, their greatest desires. It is a very special gift but also a curse because people come to her and for a price she will give them what they want. But sometimes you don’t really know what it is that you wish for. So, you can get whatever you want from Gray Alys but it’s better not to ask.” Jovovich goes on to describe Alys as a “really lonely character. She hides from people in these dark in-between places. Only the truly desperate can find her. If you are able to find her it means that she has to give you what you want. But it’s also very dangerous and sometimes the price is not worth getting what you want.”
“Gray Alys is a very interesting character,” Anderson posits. Alys is a witch, and she is obliged to grant wishes. But she warns everyone that comes to her that they may not like what they get. In many ways the people that come to her and make these wishes are people that would be better off not wishing for things. “They are often driven by their own self-interest, their own hubris,” Anderson says. “The Queen is asking for power that she really shouldn’t have. She basically wants to buy the love of a man who doesn’t love her. And Jerais is also in love, he’s in love with the Queen,” the director and producer points out.
He continues, “But he sees that the Queen loves somebody else. So, there is someone competing for the Queen’s love.” He hires Gray Alys to fail the Queen, so the Queen will eventually fall in love with him. All of these people get what they want. “And all of them get what they deserve at the end,” states Anderson. “Which is pretty dark because, you know, it’s a George R.R. Martin story. Ironically the only person who really gets what they want in the end, because they are quite selfless, is Gray Alys.”
Enter Boyce. Boyce is a hunter, an expert in the Lost Lands. The Lost Lands are basically the eradiated wastelands that surround the one remaining city that’s left on earth which is called the City Under the Mountain.
“Very few people travel out there, it’s very dangerous, filled with creatures, filled with bandits,” declares Anderson. “The few hunters that are out there are very prized and very tough. Boyce is one of them, and Gray Alys hires him as a guide on her quest to find and kill the werewolf. The werewolf lives in the far stretches of the Lost Lands in a place called Skull River.”
Boyce is a mysterious man; one doesn’t really know anything about his backstory. He’s a loner. “That’s the great thing about the story,” says Anderson. “Gray Alys and Boyce are essentially very similar. They’re both extremely good at what they do, but they are lonely people. They don’t really trust anybody. They don’t really love anyone. They don’t get close to anyone. Because getting close to somebody usually results in their death. These are two people who don’t have anyone in their lives”. And they realize they have this in common when they go on this journey together. In The Lost Lands shows them slowly starting to fall in love with each other, even though at the end of the movie there’s a big surprise waiting.”
To play that imposing role, the filmmakers turned to Dave Bautista, the former wrestling superstar who has made a name for himself in films as an action hero, but also as a very interesting actor. “Boyce is a hunter with a secret. He’s kind of a free spirit, an animal, a gambler and a drinker. He’s a cowboy, a gunslinger, which was what really drew me to the character. It’s really fun to play him,” Bautista says about his character. “When we first meet Boyce, he’s a bit of a womanizer but I think he is just trying to have fun. Actually, he is looking for something else, his equal, and I think he finds that once he is guiding Alys into the Lost Lands. He becomes quite obsessed with her, and she also develops feelings for him. They have a connection. At the same time, both are hiding things from each other.”
Bautista immediately was taken by the story. “I am a big fan of the fantasy genre,” he explains. “We have werewolves, vampires, demons. I love that. But what I particularly liked was the fact that In The Lost Lands basically is a western, and I always wanted to be in a western.”
He had actually told his agent that he was looking for a western. “Next thing I know they send me the script with a note saying it’s not exactly a western but it reads like one. I loved it from the word go, especially my character, who reminded me of Clint Eastwood.” Also, he was intrigued by the story, which he describes as “really fun and dark and twisted. I then took a deep dive into Paul’s work and was immediately taken by his feel for visuals and atmosphere. And of course, I was a massive fan of Milla’s work through the years. In fact, on our first day of shooting I couldn’t stop pinching my arm because I couldn’t believe I was shooting with Milla Jovovich.”
A world you’ve never seen before
The world depicted in In The Lost Lands is populated by characters created by George R.R. Martin. Anderson finds, “So, they are well drawn characters, they are very dark, they are very surprising. They all have hidden depths, which is a hallmark of George’s writing. In the short story the original world was very much a ‘Lord of the Rings’, post-medieval style world. It really reminded me a lot of the world of Westeros. But that world is very well established. It’s on television an awful lot. So, I felt for this story I wanted to take all the George R.R. Martin tropes but set them against a different kind of background.”
The filmmakers pushed the movie into a postapocalyptic world where it’s quite recognizably our world, the remnants of our world. “But our world has been destroyed by a war, a long time ago, so long that people don’t really remember who fought it and what it was about,” explains the director and producer. “They only remember the old world because they live in the shattered remnants of it. There are pieces of technology that are left over. And there are also these mythological creatures that could well be creatures that have been with us throughout time.” They were hiding when mankind was strong. And now that mankind has become weak, they are coming out of the shadows and taking their place in the world. “So, it’s everything that people like from George R.R. Martin,” Anderson declares. “You have the dark, twisted characters. You have the mythological creatures. But it’s against a totally fresh backdrop, a postapocalyptic world that is filled with fabulous imagery.”
“We shot this movie in a very different way,” says Anderson, talking about his directorial vision for In The Lost Lands. “I didn’t want to go out and shoot on a real location. The last movie I did, Monster Hunter, was set entirely on location. We never went indoors, we never went on a soundstage. And I felt I had pushed practical location photography as far as I could. And I was looking for a completely different look for the world of In The Lost Lands.” He got very into the idea of building this world entirely digitally and giving the audience something, they have never seen before.
Paul W.S. Anderson finally states, “I think the movie above anything else is incredibly theatrical. It’s got everything you could want from a theatrical movie: the big imagery for starters. I don’t think any movie looks like this. It’s got a very unique look. You can’t see anything like it on television. It’s got an amazing sound, it’s got big action, big emotion, big visual effects. I think that’s what the cinema needs right now. We need to make movies that make people want to leave their homes, to stop streaming. I’m not knocking streaming, but there is something to be said about the experience on the big screen. When the right movie comes along. And I feel that In The Lost Lands is just that, the right movie for a great experience at the movies.”
PAUL W.S. ANDERSON (director, screenwriter, producer) has made a name for himself internationally as a director of action-packed and extremely exciting films. Together, his works have grossed more than two billion dollars worldwide, often opening at number one in the cinema charts in every conceivable territory – an achievement that not many filmmakers can claim for themselves. Anderson turns epic stories into must-see events. He has already launched four successful franchises and has tackled genres as diverse as classic literature, science fiction, video game franchises and historical fiction in his films. He also puts his talents at the service of the advertising industry. He has directed award-winning commercials for the likes of Audi, Volkswagen and Deutsche Telekom.
Anderson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England, where he also grew up. He graduated from the University of Warwick with a Bachelor of Arts in Film & Literature; he went on to study further and was the youngest student at the university ever to complete an MBA.
Anderson’s first film was the 1994 low-budget hit “Shopping,” which he wrote and directed and which starred Sadie Frost and Jude Law (as well as a guest appearance by legendary singer Marianne Faithfull). This gritty film about British teenagers who steal cars to use for their daring heists was not shown in some cinemas in the UK, but made Anderson a name for himself as an exciting filmmaker with a penchant for high-impact action.
“Shopping” also paved Anderson’s way to Hollywood. “Mortal Kombat” was his first number one cinema hit in the USA in 1995. It was also the first successful film adaptation of a video game. The triumph of “Mortal Kombat” established Anderson as a man who could take games from the TV screen and translate them into successful franchises on the big screen. Nevertheless, he turned down offers for a sequel, preferring to focus on science fiction for the time being. His next directorial projects were “Soldier,” written by David Peoples as a “sidequel” to his dark screenplay for “Blade Runner”, as well as “Event Horizon,” starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Jason Isaacs and Joely Richardson, which has long since been considered a classic.
Anderson returned to adapting video games for the big screen with the survival horror film “Resident Evil,” starring Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez. Anderson wrote, directed and produced the film, which proved to be a worldwide commercial success, Anderson’s second successful franchise, which also included “Resident Evil: Apocalypse,” “Resident Evil: Extinction,” “Resident Evil: Afterlife,” and “Resident Evil: Retribution”. Anderson wrote and produced the sequels with his partner at Impact Pictures, Jeremy Bolt. He also returned to the director’s chair himself for “Afterlife” and “Retribution”.
Anderson doubled down on his box office power with “AVP: Alien vs. Predator,” which proved to be his third successful franchise. The film opened at number one and became the highest-grossing film in both the “Alien” and “The Predator” series.
In 2008, Anderson’s “Death Race” starring Jason Statham and Joan Allen was released in cinemas, a remake of the cult classic “Death Race 2000,” which was released by Universal and produced by Anderson with Bolt through Impact Pictures. In 2009, Anderson also produced the science fiction horror film “Pandorum” with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster with Bolt, another Impact Pictures production.
“Resident Evil: Afterlife,” the fourth installment in the increasingly successful series, was released in 2020, with Milla Jovovich once again playing the lead role in the film, which used the Vincent Pace 3D system developed for James Cameron’s “Avatar”. The film was Anderson’s first global number one and remained at the top of the international box office for a month.
Anderson followed up this highpoint in the relentlessly evolving “Resident Evil” franchise with something completely different, announcing a stylish and action-packed update of the Alexandre Dumas classic “The Three Musketeers” for Constantin Film and Summit Entertainment. Shot in 3D, the historical epic boasts an all-star cast including Milla Jovovich, Orlando Bloom, Christoph Waltz and Logan Lerman as well as Luke Evans, Ray Stephenson and Matthew Macfadyen as the charismatic title characters. The film was celebrated worldwide and grossed 150 million dollars.
That same year, Anderson returned to his blockbuster franchise, writing, producing and directing “Resident Evil: Retribution”, the highly anticipated fifth installment in the “Resident Evil” brand. The clever metamorphosis of the series mixed familiar faces with hot newcomers and grossed a whopping $240 million worldwide after its cinema release in September 2012.
In 2014, Anderson launched “Pompeii” with an outstanding cast including Kit Harington from “Game of Thrones”, Kiefer Sutherland, Emily Browning, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Carrie-Anne Moss and Jared Harris. “Pompeii” tells a classic story of love, friendship, greed and betrayal against the backdrop of the spectacular eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The visually stunning extravaganza grossed more than 120 million dollars.
Paul W.S. Anderson then turned his attention back to his flagship franchise and tackled the conclusion of the billion-dollar “Resident Evil” saga, “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” (2016). The plot threads of the last 15 years are brought together in an intelligent way, and the beloved characters have to face new monstrous adversaries in order to give the incomparable Alice a worthy farewell. Shot in South Africa, the eagerly awaited, action-packed finale was released in cinemas in January 2017 and grossed more than 315 million dollars worldwide. This made “The Final Chapter” the highest-grossing of all “Resident Evil” films, which grossed more than 1.2 billion dollars in total.
In 2018, the sci-fi horror series “Origin” was launched on You Tube Red, with Anderson serving as executive producer. He also shot the pilot film and a few other episodes. Left Bank Pictures was co-producer. The main roles are played by Tom Felton and Natalia Tena from “Game of Thrones”.
2021 saw the release of Anderson’s next epic game adaptation: Milla Jovovich starred in “Monster Hunter” opposite an international star cast including martial arts legend Tony Jaa as well as Ron Perlman.
Paul W.S. Anderson is one of the select few directors to have scored #1 US theatrical openings with his films over each one of the last four decades, from “Mortal Kombat” in 1995 to most recently “Monster Hunter” in 2020, with AVP and several Resident Evil films in between.
CONSTANTIN WERNER (screenwriter, producer) is a multihyphenate talent, a German artist who has worked as a writer, director and producer of film, TV, theater and music videos.
Constantin Werner’s first feature film “Dead Leaves” had its premiere at the 1998 AFI International Film Festival in Los Angeles. This was followed by “The Pagan Queen” (2009), a historic drama with fantasy elements based on the legend of Libuše, the Slavic queen of 8th century Bohemia.
His producing credits include the action TV series “Puma,” directed by martial arts legend Donnie Yen, for the German network RTL, the independent film “Fireflies,” starring Kate Mara, Dan Frazer and Isabel Glasser, as well as “Bettie Page: Dark Angel”. His stage directing credits include his play “Box” for La MaMa ETC in 1996, and the 2002 West Coast premiere of Pulitzer Prize nominee Adam Rapp’s play “Blackbird” at Theater Theater, Los Angeles.
His music video credits include works for the LA bands Scarling, Versailles (musician), Gliss, The Deep Eynde, Punk Bunny, Jasmine Ash and the Sixth Chamber. He is the creator and writer of the graphic novel “One Night in Prague,” which was illustrated by Tadd Galusha.
