German filmmaker Uwe Boll has officially announced his next project. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the news comes straight from Cannes with Boll revealing his plans to develop a $25 million movie about Eliot Ness, the real-life agent who was famously portrayed by Kevin Costner in The Untouchables. Boll had previously declared that he would stop making movies after years of quarreling with critics over the quality of his films.
While The Untouchables focused on Ness going after infamous gangster Al Capone, Boll’s movie, dubbed Ness, will instead focus on the “one that got away” from the special agent. Eliot Ness had also famously pursued an unidentified serial killer in Cleveland, Ohio, who’d been nicknamed by the press as the “Butcher of Kingsbury Run.” Despite the best efforts of Ness and his team, the murderer has never been publicly identified.
While Boll has often written the screenplays for his films, Ness is penned by Whitney Scott Bain. Boll will be on board to direct and produce via Event Film with Michael Roesch executive producing. According to Boll, casting is now underway and the plan is to start shooting in 2023.
Uwe Boll Objects to Bad Reviews of His Films
Throughout his career, Boll seems to have taken a lot of flak from filmgoers, and that may be especially true with video game fans. Boll has adapted a slew of different video games for the big screen, jumping into the scene with a universally-panned House of the Dead film in 2003. He has since brought to life movies based on other video games like Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne, Postal, and Far Cry, among others. They have consistently been heavily criticized by gamers.
For his part, the German filmmaker feels that he has been vindicated by the success of his other movies. He admitted to THR that he has had several video game movies that have flopped, but Boll also says he hasn’t noticed too many complaints about his other films that didn’t take inspiration from various games. Boll points to the reviews his films have been getting on Netflix as proof that people enjoy his work more than his critics have been suggesting. As Boll explained:
Though he hasn’t released a film in the United States since 2016’s Rampage: President Down, Boll did release a new German film Hanau in 2021. He said that the experience made him remember why he “stopped making movies in Germany,” which perhaps had him falling back upon making English-language films. Additionally, Boll is working on a documentary series following the Banditos motorcycle gang in Germany.
