I can remember quite vividly that, while I was in secondary school, I wanted to see some good video game movie adaptations, something which was and still is quite difficult, and I quickly ran into a name that I was told time and time again to avoid, Uwe Boll. Sometimes called “the world’s worst director“, I thought it may be interesting to take a look at Uwe Boll and his strange career.
Uwe Boll was born in the West German city of Wermelskirchen on June 22nd, 1965 and later attended the universities of Cologne and Siegen. I was also surprised to learn that Uwe Boll has a PHD with his thesis being the popularity of genre stories in 18th century Germany.
Uwe Boll directed his first film in 1991, German Fried Movie, and moved into directing horror films such as Amoklauf, released in 1994, Sanctimony, released in 2000, and Blackwoods, released in 2001. Many would argue that the movie that truly began his infamy was his 2003 adaptation of House of the Dead which began his career of adapting video games into films. The film got an overwhelmingly negative reception and performed poorly at the box office, grossing $13.8 million against a $12 million budget although this didn’t stop a sequel from being released in 2005.
After this, Uwe Boll went into a film production frenzy, directing 17 films from 2005 to 2011. While some of these movies were unrelated to video games such as the 2007 horror film Seed, the 2008 war film Tunnel Rats and the 2009 action film Rampage, a great many were with adaptations of Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne, Dungeon Siege, renamed as In the Name of the King, Far Cry and even Postal. The stunning thing about this though is how these movies continued to be made. Bloodrayne had a budget of $25 million and grossed $3.7 million while In the Name of the King had a budget of $60 million while grossing a mere $13.1 million. Despite this, two sequels were released to these films with Uwe Boll returning to direct!
So it turns out that many of Uwe Boll’s films were produced using a legal loophole in German law that allowed investors to write off their investments and only pay tax on any returns that a film makes. However, this loophole was closed in 2005 and Uwe Boll claimed that he’d been financing his own films since then. However, the decline of DVD and Blu-ray sales, his primary market it seems, led him to retire in 2016 and open a restaurant. However, he announced that he is coming out of retirement and is going to be directing films again.
As interesting as this part of his career is, it’s his relationship with the industry and critics that’s even more fascinating. In 2006, he infamously challenged his critics to a boxing match and went on to fight several in an event that was dubbed Raging Boll. He’s also aggressively insulted other industry professionals such as when he said “I’m not a fucking retard like Michael Bay.” He also lashed out when his attempts at crowdfunding failed by saying “So, basically, my message is fuck yourselves. It looks like no one gives a shit about Rampage 3 so maybe I shouldn’t do it then. I have enough money to play golf ’til I’m dead.” It’s clear that he’s an angry individual but these moments of outrage are certainly attention grabbing (perhaps that was the intention).
Uwe Boll has had a very strange career as a director but it is oddly fascinating to learn about how he managed to make these movies and how he reacts to criticism. Let me know your thoughts on the strange career of director Uwe Boll, which movies of his you’ve seen, whether you’ve liked or disliked them and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!