If you are even remotely interested in live-action movies on popular video-game franchises, the name of Paul WS Anderson’s name must be familiar. Although he did not direct the first video-game movie, he did pioneer the genre with Mortal Kombat back in 1995. Later, with Resident Evil movies, he established himself as a bankable director. While critics rarely like his movies, more often than not, his films deliver commercial success.

His latest, Monster Hunter, is a movie that has become an unexpected champion of the theatrical business with many a cinema chain counting on it to lure moviegoers to theatres. Based on Capcom’s video-game franchise of the same name, it does have the blockbuster trappings with giant monsters, a popular martial art actor in Tony Jaa, an epic scope and so on.

But why Monster Hunter specifically? What is so special about this particular franchise that Paul WS Anderson chose this as his next big thing?

He told Indianexpress.com in a Zoom interaction, “When I played the game in Japan 11 years ago, I thought the landscapes and the world that they had created was incredible. I’ve always been a massive fan of the Japanese design — and these monsters just looked awesome.”

Anderson also talked about the familiarity of movie monsters like King Kong, Godzilla and T-Rex. He said while they are iconic monsters, we have already seen them several times before.

“To see something like the Diablos or Nerscylla [In Monster Hunter] — these are radically new designs of incredible creatures. And immediately to me, the game felt obviously very, very cinematic. And with the movie, I wanted to recapture my feeling of playing the game for the very first time. This sense of wonder where you go, ‘Oh my God, what an amazing world.’”

In Monster Hunter, a group of US marines, led by Milla Jovovich’s Natalie Artemis, are pulled into the Monster Hunter’s world by way of a portal. The new world is populated by giant monsters, and the US marines spot a ‘hunter’ who kills the said monsters for a living. He helps them survive in this new world as well.

Paul WS Anderson also promised a breathtaking big-screen experience for anybody who chooses to go watch the film in theatres. He said, “I think we’ve created a whole new world to immerse an audience. And our world is undergoing such challenges now, I think to be immersed in a different world for a couple of hours as a kind of fun thing to offer people.”

Monster Hunter hits Indian screens on February 5.