Uwe Boll is a controversial director who gained recognition for a string of awful video game movies in the early ’00s, most notably BloodRayne, Far Cry, and House of the Dead — and when critics slammed these efforts, Boll invited them to “put up or shut up” in boxing matches that he would include on the DVD for his upcoming Postal film.
Unsurprisingly, with so much bad press, studios wanted little to do with Boll; Hideo Kojima once said that it was “impossible that we’d ever do a movie with him” after he campaigned to adapt Metal Gear Solid, while Blizzard said of a Warcraft film that it would “not sell the movie rights, not to you… especially not to you.”
But none of that was able to dull Boll’s ambition. When Sega announced a new House of the Dead film yesterday — helmed by Resident Evil and Monster Hunter director Paul W. S. Anderson — he immediately got to work on crowdfunding his own “inofficial sequel” in protest, bewildered that the studio would make another film without him. Even though they already did in 2005 with the first sequel.
Uwe Boll Is Even Trying To Pawn NFTs In 2026
“Sony is filming with Paul Anderson (yes… the very bad director… not the good one) a new House of the Dead and it creates thanks to the $60 million budget and $40 million p&a spend a new hype worldwide,” Uwe Boll wrote on his new website. “That will create the opportunity to re-license my original but also to make money with a new film from me named 23 Years Later – Return to Zombie Island.
But it’s not ending like Love Island, it’s ending as Zombie Island.
“The idea is to bring the dead from my film back as zombies like Ona Grauer, Will Sanderson, Tyron Leitso, Clint Howard, Elisabeth Rosen and maybe even das boot captain Juergen Prochnov,” he continued. “The only survivor of my original film Rudy (Jonathan Cherry) will be trying to rescue his daughter and her friends who went against his advise to the locked off island. This new film shows a group of sexy, silly, campy, horny, young adults to a sleepaway camp – but it’s not ending like Love Island, it’s ending as Zombie Island.”
On the 23 Years Later website, Boll even left a video message for his fans, signed off as the “Mission Commander” (a “legendary figure in the independent film world”), in which he describes the film as a “testament to what we lost” and likens fundraising not as a contribution, but as “enlistment.” You can “fund the resistance” if you really want by purchasing set photos and signed blu-rays for up to €150, even though the movie doesn’t exist yet; alternatively, you can spend €580 on an NFT (yes, an NFT) avatar of yourself to be inserted in the movie for ten seconds as a zombie.
True to Uwe Boll’s legacy, this website also features a minigame called “eat the critics”.
Boll is hoping to get the film financed and filmed in March 2026, and to show that he means business, he shared some “script fragments” that detail an “ultimate content weapon” (i.e. an influencer who fights off a zombie with a selfie stick), “the cardio session from hell”, and, of course, “the post-apocalyptic makeover”. There’s even a creature FX test, which we’re almost certain is AI.
If Boll can’t miraculously fund an entire movie and begin filming by next month, all in a knee-jerk reaction to Sega announcing a new House of the Dead movie, he promises to refund anyone who did invest. At least he’s not outright calling it ‘House of the Dead’ this time like he did with the Postal 2 movie he tried to crowdfund without Scissors’ permission in 2024.
- Release Date
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April 11, 2003
- Runtime
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90 minutes
- Director
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Uwe Boll
