After Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and most recently Tekken (Screen Daily Feb 21), attention has now turned to Sega's best-selling video game, House Of The Dead for a live-action feature production.

The Euros 12m project is set to crank up in May in Vancouver under the direction of German producer-director Uwe Boll, whose previous credits include the English-language thrillers Sanctimony and Blackwoods.

According to Boll, Sega will support the film with an international promotional campaign and launch a House Of The Dead IV game to tie-in with the film's US release in early 2004.

In addition, Sega and Universal's 13th Street will collaborate with Mindfire Entertainment, who acquired the project from Dreamworks, to create a dedicated Internet homepage enabling fans of the game and the horror genre to follow the progress of the film's production.

Originally developed by Mindfire, House Of The Dead is now a 100% Boll KG production, with Mindfire acting as associate producer on the title.

Boll told Screen Daily that the project was already pre-sold to Metropolitan (France) at the AFM and he was looking to have it picked up by Manga for Spain and Gaga for Japan.

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