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Famous Like Me > Director > B > Uwe Boll

Profile of Uwe Boll on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Uwe Boll  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 22nd June 1965
   
Place of Birth: Wermelskirchen, Germany
   
Profession: Director
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia

Uwe Boll (born June 22, 1965 in Wermelskirchen, Germany) is a director of movies based on video games, such as House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, the forthcoming BloodRayne, Hunter: The Reckoning, Fear Effect, Dungeon Siege, and Far Cry and several others he has acquired the movie rights to. His Boll KG company slogan declares itself to be the "World Market Leader in Video Game Adaptations." He is currently in a bidding war for rights to Half-Life and Metal Gear Solid, and recent online interviews suggest that he may be after the rights to Fallout and Castlevania as well.

Boll has also been criticized for what many perceive as excessive hubris. He has made statements comparing himself to directors such as Sergio Leone and David Lynch, despite the generally poor reception his movies have received, and has also stated that the poor performance of his movies is mainly due to "dumb audiences." He has also been accused of imposing his movie vision upon the video game series they are based on, such as an attempt to have Rayne altered so that in future games she would more closely resemble Kristanna Loken, the actress who plays her in Boll's movie.

His movies have achieved critical hatred and abysmal box office returns (though House of the Dead managed to break $5.73 million after a moderately good opening weekend) and are often considered "worst of the year." Despite the criticism and detractors, however, Boll has a small cult following which often calls him a modern-day Ed Wood: a director with evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production who ultimately makes movies that are generally thought of as being some of the worst ever made.

Despite criticism, Boll has been known to interact with fans by regularly posting on various internet message boards including IGN.com, SomethingAwful, and The Digital Bits. Due to his reputation, Boll has been known to use various aliases based on German folklore. Boll has been quoted as saying that he likes to gauge fan reaction from previous films before working on his next.

Boll essentially is a modern-day director. He's able to secure the investors (mostly German, in Hollywood often derisively referred to as "stupid German money"), secure the rights for cheap, picking games with only moderate brand recognition, does all of the actual production himself, and swiftly cranks out a movie. While under normal circumstances a director's movies could gross so little he's eventually shut out from every operating studio, Boll is exempt because he funds them under a loophole in German tax law that is supported by contributors and actually rewards movies that perform badly, via a writeoff at the end of the year.

It has been recently reported that the loophole in German tax law has been revised. Starting January 2006, contributors to failed films will no longer be able to profit from failed films through a tax writeoff at the end of the year. This may well result in an end to Boll's film career, as it would make it impossible for him to capitalize on films that fail at the box office, resulting in a loss of investors.

Boll earned a doctorate in literature from the University of Cologne in 1995. He has written two books, Oder wie man in Deutschland einen Film drehen muss ('Or, how one has to make a movie in Germany') and Die Gattung Serie und ihre Genres ('Serials and their genres'), on themes of serial TV.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Uwe Boll