The teaser trailer for Monster Hunter has been unleashed. It’s very brief, but it warns that something big is coming by showcasing a gigantic Diablos monster. This is the first official footage from the highly anticipated movie, which was supposed to open in theaters back in September. Director Paul W.S. Anderson announced back in July that the movie is “100% finished”.
It was believed that the movie would hit theaters in April 2021, due to the public health crisis. “It’s coming out April 23rd of next year. For me, it’s my most favorite movie I’ve ever made. It has a rather unique look to it,” said Anderson over the summer. But now it looks like that has changed. While there is no specific new release date, this first look footage reveals that Monster Hunter will be arriving only in theaters this December.
The Monster Hunter teaser is only 17 seconds long, but it packs a lot of anxiety into that small amount of time. Milla Jovovich, Clifford “T.I.” Harris, Jr., Diego Boneta, and Meaghan Good are all featured in the footage, along with the aforementioned Diablos monster. The Monster Hunter teaser was shown at Comic Con Russia 2020 and a full-length trailer is apparently on the way, though, as of this writing, a release date has not been announced.
In Monster Hunter, another world exists. It’s a world of dangerous and powerful monsters that rule their domain with deadly ferocity, which are seen in the teaser trailer. When an unexpected sandstorm transports Lt. Artemis (Milla Jovovich) and her unit (T.I. Harris, Meagan Good, Diego Boneta) to a new world, the soldiers are shocked to discover that this hostile and unknown environment is home to enormous and terrifying monsters immune to their firepower. The variety of weapons that the team has are also featured in the footage, and it looks like they’re really not going to do them any good at all.
Paul W.S. Anderson is a big fan of the Monster Hunter video game franchise. While playing the game, he zeroed in on something specific that he wanted to incorporate into the movie. “I was playing it when it was relatively unknown in the West and no-one else was really aware of it,” says Anderson. “It was not only all the creatures but also the environments they lived it. They really did a great job of creating this world, this environment, this wild habitat, that they lived in.” So, the director set out to bring that world into ours.
While attempting to bring Monster Hunter to life, Paul W.S. Anderson knew that he did not want to rely on green screens for all of the action. “I felt it was really important to get out on location and shoot if we wanted to do justice to the amazing landscapes form the game, and that’s exactly what we did,” he explains. The bulk of the movie was shot in Africa with lush jungles and dry deserts, many of which have never been used for a movie, due to how remote they are. You can check out the first footage from Monster Hunter below, thanks to the IGN YouTube channel.